The Pipeline Products Marketing Company (PPMC) may crash the prices of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly referred to as petrol, this month.
While making the disclosure, the National Vice President, the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Alhaji Abubakar Maigandi, said the marketers are looking forward to a downward review of the ex-depot price for October.
According to a report from the Nation, the IPMAN top official said that the forecast is based on the drop in crude oil prices. The Brent Crude and the Bonny light crude are currently both trading at less than $40 per barrel.
He, however, said the marketers were expecting the announcement of the new price from the PPMC, which is a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
It can be recalled that the Executive Secretary of Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Abdulkadir Saidu, disclosed last month that the international price of crude oil is not the only determining factor in fixing the retail pump price of petrol as other metrics come into consideration.
He said that marketers have been given the approval to fix the price of petrol because it has been deregulated and as such should be determined by market forces.
The Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, also said that deregulation policy is in line with global best practice and will ensure economic growth and development of the country.
Nairametrics had last month, reported the increase of ex-depot price from N138.62 per litre to N151. 56 per litre by PPMC as a fallout of the deregulation policy. This has seen the retail marketers across the country selling petrol at between N158 and N162 per litre.
This was announced through an internal memo by PPMC on September 2, 2020 in a brief internal memo to stakeholders.