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Cooking Gas Prices To Decline Further, Says FG

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Cooking gas prices in Nigeria, according to the Federal Government (FG), will decline further considering the measures put in place.

The assurance by the FG is contrary to the projection of the Executive Secretary, Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers (NALPGAM), Bassey Essien, who revealed that due to the reintroduction of customs duty and VAT for imported cooking gas which he said was not favourable to importers of the commodity, cooking gas price would shoot up further.

But reacting to the marginal drop in cooking gas price on Thursday, January 6, 2021, the Programme Manager, National LPG Expansion Implementation Plan, Office of the Vice President, Dayo Adeshina expressed optimism that the current realities in the global market would leverage the government’s chances of influencing a further decline in the prices of the commodity.

Moneycentral understands that yesterday, the price of 12.5kg liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) dropped from N8,800 to between N8400 and N8200. In some outlets, the price of the commodity dropped to between N7,800 and N8,000 as of Thursday.

This is, however, exciting for Nigerians, who experienced, over 240% increase in the prices of cooking gas from N3,000 for 12.5kg to N10,200 within the first 10 months of last year (2021).

Speaking on behalf of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government, Adeshina stated: “It is in government’s interest for the price to go down consistently and there are certain initiatives that are being taken at the moment, which hopefully will see to further drops in price regardless of the international cost.”

When asked about the measures deployed by the federal government to ensure that the cooking gas prices drop further, Adeshina noted that about 65% of what Nigerians consume is imported, saying at the global stage, LPG prices, which had risen so high in October last year, dipped towards the end of 2021 into January 2022.

“If you look at the international pricing of the LPG, and that might change again because it is not a fixed price, in January last year, it was $250 per tonne.

“It rose to $875 per tonne by the end of October and started dropping by the end of November into December, and came down to around $500 per tonne at some point but went up again in December to $708 per tonne.

“Now, as of the third of January this year, that figure is $744 per tonne. So you can see there is a drop from about $800 around November to $700 in January. The issue here is that the price has been fluctuating.

“Yes, you have the effects of Customs and the position of the VAT that made people pay tax for what they imported even in 2019 and 2020. Of course, some importers stopped importing, but there is a resolution going on to resolve that aspect,” he revealed.

He, therefore, said boosting the storage capacity of cooking gas would help in putting the prices down.

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