The Chief Executive, Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, has said that going forward, the market will dictate the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) as the agency will no longer fix prices or release templates for petrol.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja, Ahmed said that market forces would henceforth dictate prices under the liberalised market.
“As far as we are concerned in the NMDPRA, this is not like before when the PPPRA fixes the price; in a deregulated market, it is the market force that dictates the price,” he said.
He also revealed that the Federal Government has officially scrapped the petroleum equalisation as well as the national transport allowance.
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The PEF was set up to ensure price uniformity of petroleum products via the reimbursement of marketers for losses they incur in trucking products from depots to their filling stations anywhere in Nigeria.
“The market is now open for everybody that wants to import as far as they meet all the requirements, it is not about the NNPC alone; For everybody in the sector, we make sure we guide their operations whether at the depot or wherever the product is but we will not put a cap to say this is what the price must be,” he said.
Ahmed said that marketers are now free to source their foreign exchange anywhere around the world to import petroleum products and then recover their costs without impediments, adding that the CBN will not give dollar to anyone because it is an open market
“Anyone willing to open a letter of credit from any part of the world can do that to import. That marketers can source their forex from anywhere is the beauty of the liberalised market that the NMDPRA has introduced based on the provision of the law,” he said.
He also stated that the NMDPRA and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) will mount aggressive monitoring of activities in the downstream sector to prevent profiteering by petroleum marketers.
“We put the regulation in place, we make sure quality control is complied with, we make sure the product is there and we give licence to a prospective importer,” Ahmed said.
