In a bid to encourage more investors in the cooking gas market, the Federal Government has removed Value Added Tax (VAT) on locally produced cooking gas in Nigeria.
The Executive Director in charge of Commercials at the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Billy Okoye who made this known said the Federal Government was able to remove VAT with the efforts of the NNPC and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).
The removal of VAT, according to Okoye, would encourage more investors in the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) market.
Osa Ogieva-Okunbor, the President of the Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers (NALPGAM), said the removal of the VAT was an effort to develop effective policies to encourage investors to come into the LPG sector to deepen market penetration, boost the country’s economy and protect the environment.
Ogieva-Okunbor commended the Federal Government for setting up a committee to look at the issue of VAT on locally produced LPG which he said has made the product to reach the consumers.
However, the price of 12.5 kg cylinder of cooking gas has risen from N3,800 in N4,000.
Similarly, the price of 6kg cylinder has risen from N7,900 to N 8,500, and 3kg from N3,200 to N3,700. Similarly, the price of 20 metric tonnes (about 35,000 litres) of the LPG, which was N4 million has been increased to N4.6 million.
This was further confirmed by Nairametrics’ research on Household Food Items, conducted from major markets in Lagos State, revealing that prices of cooking gas was on the rise for the week ended August 10, 2018.
It would be recalled that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), released the LPG (cooking gas) price watch for the month of March, 2018.
In the price watch, an average price for the refilling of a 5kg cylinder for Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Cooking Gas) decreased by -3.03% month-on-month and decreased by -16.16% year-on-year to ₦2090.97 64 March 2018 from ₦2,155.97 in February 2018.
