The lingering fuel scarcity in Nigeria may be far from over as depot owners appear to have abandoned the pricing template of Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, thereby sabotaging efforts of Federal Government to end the fuel crisis.
BrandiQ learned that depot owners have dumped the current PPPRA pricing template for petroleum products released on April 1, using the pricing template for the first quarter of the year.
While the present PPPRA pricing template for ex-depot collection price is N76, no marketer gets the product at that price, as they pay up to N120 per litre, apart from the thousands of Naira given, underhand, to security agents to facilitate the entry of their trucks.
It was gathered that marketers add up these costs which are passed on to motorists, who buy the product between N150 and N200, as against the official price of N86.50k.
President of the National Association of Road Transport Owners, NARTO, Mr. Kassim Bitaya said the current fuel scarcity facing the country was caused by PPPRA.
Bitaya said: “I expected that PPPRA should have called a stakeholders’ meeting like they did in the past before rolling out pricing templates. Rather, what we discovered was that they just rolled out the template without carrying the stakeholders along.”
He explained that the pricing template was calculated based on the official exchange rate of N197, adding that no marketer had access to foreign exchange to bring in products at that rate, a development that resulted in many marketers jettisoning the idea of importation.
“The pricing template, as presently designed, is faulty because some components ought not to be there in the first place, while some need to be reviewed either downward or upward,” he added.
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