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Says FG to address 271 levies
From Okwe Obi, Abuja
Minister of Petroleum Resources (Oil) Heineken Lokpobiri has stated that the Federal Government is more concerned with the availability of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), ensuring the right quantity and quality control, rather than focusing on price.
Lokpobiri, who spoke to journalists after a closed-door meeting with industry players yesterday in Abuja, explained that price control is beyond Nigeria’s scope. According to him, deregulation has provided Nigerians the opportunity to patronise any filling station of their choice.
He said: “During Christmas, I was in Bayelsa. I went round different filling stations. Some stations were selling for N1,020, others were selling for N990, and some were selling for N1,050.
“What we are concerned about is quality control. What the government is more interested in is availability. What the government is particularly interested in is the measurement of the right quantity.
“If you are buying ten litres of PMS, let it be that you are not cheated. That is where we have issues.
“And once there is competition, people will have a choice. That’s why you do not see queues. If I like, I can enter the one that sells for N1,050, and if I like, I can enter the one that sells less. That is the real essence of deregulation. So, in a deregulated market, nobody can tell you that prices will come down or will not come down.”
While responding to the challenges affecting the sector, especially the multiplicity of taxes, Lokpobiri said: “Part of the challenges we had when we came on board was to see how we could ramp up production. We are already doing that.
“We are not where we want to be, but we are already getting there. Another challenge was the availability of products. Where you see queues, prices are likely to go up. Those were the issues that we addressed.
“Another issue we are trying to address is policy conflict. One agency making a policy that will affect another agency.
“Nigeria has so many taxes and levies, amounting to over 271. The highest in the world. These are issues we want to sit down and address. So, there will always be challenges. Life itself is a challenge.”
On his part, the President of the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria (PETAN), Woke Ogusanya, explained that the meeting was held to support the government in achieving the mandate of President Bola Tinubu.
He said: “We are here to support the minister in the drive to make the oil and gas industry sustainable for this country. And what we have told him is that we are writing a position paper. How do we sustain our industry?
“A lot of Nigerians do not understand, because not all of us are in oil and gas.
“If you go to the Middle East, they have policies where the volume of oil and gas that is produced year in, year out is sustained.
“So, we are supporting the minister to write a policy to ensure that this boom and bust that we have had in the Nigerian industry can be mitigated. If you look at the price of oil, it started increasing since 2022.
“We were struggling to increase production, and thanks to this minister and this administration, for the first time, we are producing at the level that OPEC has allocated to us. Imagine if we had started producing that for two years.”