The Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has yesterday said through the Petroleum Resources Minister of State Timipre Sylva at the ministerial meeting on the Reactivation of the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP) Project in Abuja, that the Federal Government was set to decentralise the monopoly of the importation of Automotive Gas Oil (AGO) otherwise known as diesel and Jet-A1 (aviation fuel)
Sylva told reporters that the liberalisation of the importation of the two deregulated products would make it possible for their users to access foreign exchange to import them and also to check the rising costs of the products.
The minister blamed the frequent scarcity of the products and their high prices on the paucity of foreign exchange.
Sylva said:: “The problem with aviation fuel is that it is a deregulated commodity. So, it is not within the purview of the government to fix the prices at all.
“And of course, the actual issue is also the paucity of foreign exchange. People cannot access foreign exchange to import diesel.
“So, for the time being, NNPC has been the main importer of these products. But what we are trying to do is to democratise the importation so that the aviation fuel users themselves can be able to access foreign exchange on the Import and Export window and they should be able to import these products.”
The minister refute the attribution of the scarcity of diesel and aviation fuel to be the fault of government, saying the Russian and Ukraine war has further aggravated the prices of the two deregulated products.
