Petrol pump price may hit N750/litre — Petrol Marketers (IPMAN)

The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has suggested that the retail price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) could rise to around N750 per litre in the near future.

Despite the association’s call for the government to take action to prevent further naira depreciation, this has happened, as reported by our correspondent.

Mr. Chinedu Ukadike, the national spokesperson for the association, dropped a hint while speaking with our Abuja correspondent.

However, he noted that once the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), the country’s largest importer of petroleum products, adjusts its ex-depot price from N587.7, other marketers will follow suit.

Ukadike predicts a 10% hike because “the dollar was N750, and now is over N900, that is almost a 20% increase if you apply this, you should be talking about N750/ litre.”

He said the exchange rate between the dollar and the Naira was to blame, and that it would also affect the cost of bringing in products.

“Today, the dollar rate on the parallel market is N910, which means that the cost of landing PMS will rise, as will the cost of PMS in the domestic market.

There is no local production in Nigeria, and people need to realise that the government is no longer subsidising the industry. The pursuit of the dollar by too many Nigerian naira could have been mitigated if domestic production were available. It would have been useful and would have saved us some money.

Naira could be close to N1,100 per dollar by the end of the year “if the government does not do something drastically,” he said, calling this “serious inflation for Nigeria.”

The PMS pump price has doubled since the government stopped subsidising the product, so prices are now set by market forces.