Following the serious public outrage and outcry from Nigerians that greeted the increase in the price of Premium Motor Spirit also known as petrol, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, on Friday has reversed it’s decision to increase the petrol price.
As to what really triggers the reversal, It was unclear as at the time of filling this report whether pressure was mounted on PPPRA to delete the template to douse public outcry, a move that was not immediately clarified by officials.
The reversal comes after the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation insisted that there was no increment in the ex-depot price of petrol contrary to PPPRA report.
According to the template which the PPPRA released midnight, petrol is expected to sell at a lower retail price of N209.61 and at an upper retail price of N212.61. Nigerian marketers usually use the upper band for pump price.
The expected ex-depot price, as seen in the template, is N206.42, while the landing cost is N189.61. The ex-depot price is the price at which the product is sold by the NNPC to marketers at the depots.
With ex-depot price standing at N206.42 per litre, the March template shows that the landing cost for petrol per litre is N189.61.
But the PPPRA, in a seeming U-turn, deleted the template hours later. As of 9am on Friday, the template was still on the PPPRA website but a check by DAILY GIST confirmed that the report has been deleted. The website page showed ‘Page not found 404’.
The controversial template report which had caused a major backlash from Nigerians was previously accessible here: http://pppra.gov.ng/pms-guiding-price-for-march-2021/.
