The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has yesterday criticized the Pipelines and Product Marketing Company (PPMC) for the current scarcity of premium motor spirit (PMS) in the country.
The Chairman, IPMAN, Lagos Satellite Depot, Mr. Akin Akinrinade, while briefing the media in Lagos, stated that; “Our members are registered to load with PPMC, but since December last year, not a litre has been lifted at the NNPC’s Satellite depots in Ejigbo. We have tickets that have been paid for amounting to over a billion naira as far back as October last year and as we speak, these tickets have not been loaded meaning that PPMC is holding on to our money,” he said.
He added: “These are funds we are supposed to use to run our businesses. We are businessmen, we take bank loans and now we are paying for money that we are not using.”
This scarcity of petrol has replenished stock based on the price of loading PMS from private depots. he suggested that based on current economic realities, the sustainable price to sell PMS should be pegged at N180 per litre.
“As I am talking to you today, no private depot is selling below N162 per litre ex-depot. We still need to add the cost of transportation which is between N6 to N8 depending on the distance within Lagos and if it is outside Lagos, it is more than that and if you add the transportation cost to N162, it is already N170 and do not forget that this product is regulated by the federal government.
“We have not even added other charges at the depots and the running cost of our stations. Our members can no longer sell at N165 and in fact, there is no reasonable businessman that can sell below N180 per litre,” he lamented.
He also noted that most of its members have shut down their stations because the operating environment was no longer sustainable to do business under the current price of PMS.
He concluded “The war has jacked up the price everywhere across the globe, so it is not as if our members are trying to sabotage the federal government it is just that we can no longer sustain the price they are giving us. So unless the government intervenes by bringing the products to our depots for us to buy at N148.17 as against the N162. How do we break even? We want Nigerians to know that we are patriotic and corporate Nigerians and we want the government to do what needs to be done to address this challenge,” he averred.
