The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, has said that the Federal Government is collaborating with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to ensure the availability of conversion kits for a critical mass of vehicles expecting to convert to use of autogas.
This is part of the measure to ensure full implementation of the AutoGas Policy which was launched by President Muhammadu Buhari on December 1, 2020, to help reduce the impact of the rising pump price of petrol.
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This disclosure was made by Sylva during an interactive session with the press in Abuja on Tuesday, May 18, 2021.
Sylva said that there was the need to have a critical mass of vehicles converted to use gas to achieve the desired impact in the country.
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What the Minister of State for Petroleum is saying
Sylva in his statement said, “Now, if you have a critical mass of vehicles, maybe one million converted to use gas, you must also have a commensurate amount of filling stations that are enabled to fill the one million cars converted.
So, you cannot do one aspect of it in exclusion, they must go hand in hand, if not, the whole programme will not make sense. We are working right now with the Central Bank of Nigeria to ensure that we are able to bring in conversion kits for a critical mass of vehicles.
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And then also give soft loans at the same time to downstream operators to fix their filling stations, so that when we fit the two together, it will work. That process is ongoing, we have already launched the policy and it has brought the attention to Nigerians to know that it is a policy direction now.’’
He said that one or two filling stations cannot save the whole situation, but rather, ensuring a critical mass of vehicles and filling stations would help the implementation of the policy.
He said, “I can tell you that we are working on that and I think it is a very good development.’’