The prices of Liquefied Petroleum Gas otherwise known as cooking gas may further go up as marketers stopped importation of the essential commodity following reintroduction of customs duty and Value Added Tax on imported LPG.
The Executive Secretary, Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers, Bassey Essien, who disclosed this recently stated that there were several other issues and stressed that if the halt in LPG imports should drag further, the supply of the commodity domestically could suffer a severe drop.
This came as NALPGAM in an open letter to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, urged the minister to urgently intervene in the skyrocketing price of LPG in Nigeria.
The open letter was signed by the National President, NALPGAM, Olatunbosun Oladapo, and Essien. NALPGAM is the umbrella body of operators of LPG bottling plants licensed by the statutorily empowered government agencies to carry out the business of safe bottling of cooking gas.
Essien stated that due to the fears expressed by importers who had stopped importation of LPG into the country, cooking gas sourced from the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas company was now selling in the region of N11m per 20 metric tonnes truck.
Providing further explanation on this, Essien said, “The NLNG supplies LPG to the terminals and these terminals sell to the marketers and at times in a day, the price can go up by about three times.
“But when there are issues like this, some unscrupulous people will want to capitalise on the situation, which they are doing, because right now, from what we’ve got, the price at which NLNG product gets to Lagos is about N7m, but you get it at N11m and above.”
