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Uche Usim, Abuja
As Nigeria finally exit the petrol subsidy regime, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) on Sunday clarified that oil marketers may not be given the powers to solely determine the price of the commodity as they are desiring.
Executive Secretary of PPPRA, Abdulkadir Saidu, in a statement explained that media reports on the price removal for petrol was totally misconstrued.
Rather, Saidu noted that his agency will continually act as guide towards determining the pump price of petrol to avoid arbitrariness.
This, he noted, will be in form of releasing monthly guide on the pricing of the product in line with the regulation on the market-based pricing regime it published.
According to him, “the published regulation does not confer on marketers the power to fix prices for the product as they deem fit, but rather guiding prices would be advised by the PPPRA according to market realities.
“The agency shall monitor market trends and advise the NNPC and oil marketing companies on the monthly market-based guiding price, which shall include the indicative retail price at which the product shall be sold across the country” he added.
He stressed that government would will continue to monitor the price of petroleum products and advise on monthly guiding prices that guarantee reasonable returns to operators, while ensuring consumers pay appropriate prices in line with market reality and are not overcharged.
“For the avoidance of doubt, it is instructive to state that no private individual or group, has the mandate to fix prices of petroleum products, however the statutory regulatory body is saddled with the responsibility of advising on guiding prices. “Suffice to say that in a deregulated market, the role of a regulator in monitoring and regulating activities in the sector cannot be over-emphasized” he stated.
The Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Mr Timipre Marlin Sylva, recently said that oil marketers alone would not be allowed to determine the price of the commodity despite the fact that the product, at the moment, has been deregulated.
He said the move stems from the urgent need to protect the public from undue exploitation and inordinate profiteering by the importers.
Meanwhile a recent survey by the National Bureau of Statistics has revealed that about four people in every ten Nigerians (42 per cent) who were working before the corona virus outbreak in the country lost their jobs due to the impact of COVID-19, pandemic in April alone.
The NBS sample included respondents in the poorest households, where about 5 in 10 (45 per cent) stopped working due to COVID-19, and the wealthiest households, where about 4 in 10 (39 per cent) lost their jobs. According to a former outsourced staff of a new generation bank who was laid off by his employer last month, although he received full payment for May, he said he “feels bad and very unusual” that that might be his last.
