Why Petrol Price’ll Continue To Increase – Retailers

The President of the Petroleum Product Retail Outlet Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), Dr Billis Gillis-Harry on Tuesday noted that the price of petroleum will continue to increase until the Federal Government put functioning refineries in place.

Gillis-Harry while speaking with newsmen in Port Harcourt disclosed that the association has the capacity to manage the refineries, giving its vast establishments across the country.

He said, “The cost of fixing the refineries today from what we are told is running into about $1.8 billion or thereabouts. Revamping the four refineries will cost Nigeria too much money.”

“PETROAN can come together and partner with the federal government in ensuring that we have established modular refineries that can do at least up to fifteen thousand barrels per day. That should be able to guarantee our domestic consumption per day.”

He called on the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to be sincere in its deregulation of the petroleum sector.

“As far as the pricing of petroleum product is concerned, we know that because of certain exigencies that are happening in the market, prices of petroleum product will continue to increase. There is no doubt about that. Let the government start to work together on how to bring in economic dynamics that should be able to cushion such shock in the system.”

The PETROAN President added that the association would work with the Federal government to ensure that subsidy was no longer the order of the day.

In another development, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said that the consumer price index, which measures the rate of increase in the price of goods and services, increased to 16.47 per cent in January.

According to the NBS, this is the highest point since April 2017.