Even as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced a reduction in the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) also known as petrol, a former Minister of Interior and owner of Integrated Tank Farm located in Ibafon area of Apapa, Capt Emmanuel Iheanacho has advised the government to embrace full deregulation of the petrol.
Iheanacho told Shipping Position Daily that the permanent solution to the challenges of the poor masses on accessing the fuel is for government to suspend payment of subsidies to petroleum marketers and free the market for investors to control it.
Shipping Position Daily gathered that the NNPC has since January 2017 been the sole importer of petrol into Nigeria. The corporation also announced last week that its intervention has caused the price of petrol to fall from N145 per litre to between N143 and N142 per litre in some stations across the country.
But the Integrated tank farm boss in his summation said that the solution to the rigors of importing petrol is for the federal government and the NNPC to hands-off its interventions on the petrol totally and leave it in the hands of marketers.
He said that payment of subsidy is a complete waste of resources, and that the subsidy was never getting to poor people which it was intended to help.
“The solution to all of these is deregulation, if you deregulate, there would be no incentive for anybody to go and steal product, diesel has been deregulated, what we are saying now is that other products likewise should also be regulated. We should look at what is happening to the price of diesel, some people have said that if we deregulate, there is going to be high price, but the price of diesel has remained at N150 to N155 and this is where it stays all the time”
“This is what we advocate should happen with PMS, if the product is deregulated, for the first few weeks, the price would spike, after this, it would stop. People who import PMS had to endure a lot of rigors because of the lack of deregulation”
“If we deregulate, there would be no need for subsidy, the subsidy is a complete waste, they should use this money to solve other economic challenges, since the government partially deregulated, they have breathed a sigh of relieve because prior to that, huge amounts have been paid, but my argument was that the subsidy was never getting to poor people because it was suppose to help poor people in terms of transport cost. The government did a wonderful thing by throttling back on subsidy and I think that if there are any subsidies left, the government should jettison it and free the market, it would lead to better prices of products” he said.
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