Natural Oil and Gas Suppliers Association of Nigeria (NOGASA) has disclosed that its members now spend as much as N25 million to purchase a 45,000 litres truck of Premium Motor Spirit popularly referred to as petrol.
Before the subsidy was withdrawn, a fuel tanker was purchased for N7 million.
According to NOGASA, the situation has made it impossible for its members to cough out the differentials.
National President of NOGASA, Mr. Bennett Korie, who revealed this Wednesday in Abuja, insisted that there is need to also consider the problems associated with the removal.
“We are 100 percent in support of subsidy removal, but you know that everybody is talking about subsidy removal but they don’t talk about the problem behind the subsidy removal. It is good to remove subsidies but there are things that people don’t know, for instance, some of the marketers don’t have the money to pay differentials.
“This is because in less than an hour that Mr. President announced the removal of the subsidy, the price changed and that affected a lot of marketers. We are talking about millions of naira. Before the removal, a tanker of fuel was selling for about seven million, but in less than an hour, it went up to 25 million naira, where is the money?” he lamented.
Korie said that Nigeria’s high interest rate of 30 percent was making it difficult for marketers to make profits. According to him, where would marketers get money from to continue the distribution of petroleum products across the country.
He urged the federal government to pay marketers their outstanding of the Petroleum Equalization Fund (PEF) to boost their Capita and enable them stay in business.
“Subsidy was removed without considering some of these problems. At the same time, before now, we have this PEF. But they are not paying the marketers. There is no money, where do we get the money?
“Therefore, I want to use this opportunity to appeal to the government to please pay marketers their PEF, so that they will continue in business, if it is not paid, we would not get fuel to sell,” he said.
