Residents of Bayelsa, Cross River and Kogi states paid the highest average price for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly known as petrol in August 2019, the latest data from National Bureau of Statistics has said.
The Bureau said residents of Bayelsa paid average of N146.78 per litre for petrol, while residents of Cross River and Kogi paid N146.77 and N146.75 respectively.
This showed that the residents bought the product more than the official pump price of N145 per litre.
Meanwhile, Kaduna State, Zamfara and Katsina were the states with the lowest average price as they sold the product below the official pump price in the month under review.
Residents of Kaduna bought the Petrol at N144.68 per litre while Zamfara residents bought at N144.34 and Katsina sold the product at N142.51.
“Despite the subsidy claims by importers and in spite of the inclusion of a bridging fund (Petroleum Equalisation Fund) on the pricing template, the geographical variations in the prices of these products remain one of the major challenges facing petroleum products supply in the economy,” Research by African Centre for Leadership, Strategy & Development said.
The report added that continuing contestations over the removal of subsidy clearly show that the matter of petroleum pricing in Nigeria remains an unresolved issue while also admitting that a pricing scheme which is based on importation and the need to ensure import price parity is not in the long-run interest of the national economy as domestic refining necessarily has to be the basis of long term pricing.
“Our domestic refineries must be made to work. Appropriate incentives need to be worked out to attract new investment in refining. While domestic refining by itself is not sufficient to guarantee product price stability, there are clear gains to be derived from domestic refining as opposed to imports,” the report titled Pricing of Petroleum Products in Nigeria said.
Nigeria’s inability to refine adequate petroleum products domestically in order to meet local demand has continued to render the downstream sector vulnerable to foreign exchange volatility, particularly for petroleum independent marketers.
The advent of Dangote refinery – which is set to produce 0.65mbpd of refined products – and other modular refineries will significantly impact the current landscape in the downstream sector which upon completion will exceed domestic consumption levels and subsequently export excess refined products to neighbouring African countries.
Also, NBS data revealed that the average price paid by consumers for premium motor spirit (petrol) decreased by -1.0percent year-on-year and increased by 0.3percent month-on-month to N145.5 in August 2019 from N145.0 in July 2019.
NBS noted that the Fieldwork was done solely by over 700 NBS Staff in all States of the federation supported by supervisors who were monitored by internal and external observers.
