Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva on Friday denied there are plans by the federal government to increase the current price of premium motor spirit, popularly known as petrol.
Sylva at an event in Lagos State called on marketers not to create artificial scarcity and hoarding occasioned by such unsubstantiated claims.
Earlier on Friday the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) published a template announcing that the new price of petrol has reached N212.6 per litre, with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in a tweet insisting that there was no increment in the ex-depot price of petrol.
Following the persistent outrage that greeted the publication of the template, the PPPRA deleted it from its website.
The ex-depot price is the price at which the product is sold by the NNPC to marketers at the depots.
The deleted template which the PPPRA released late Thursday showed that petrol is expected to sell at a lower retail price of N209.61 and at an upper retail price of N212.61.
Marketers in Nigeria usually use the upper band for pump price.
As of 9am on Friday, the template was still on the PPPRA’s website but a check by ARISE News at 10:45am showed that the template has been deleted.
By Abel Ejikeme
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