President Muhammadu Buhari and the 36 states governors will on Thursday decide on a new petrol pump price at a meeting to be held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, who disclosed this on Sunday after a bipartite meeting at the Villa said the government had finished discussions with labour leaders on the issue of the petrol price increase.
According to him, the organised labour and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) have studied the report of the Technical Committee on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) Pricing Framework as agreed at the last meeting and made their submissions
The minister said: “The labour side saw that they (NNPC) were making some points and as I said, it is a work in progress. Governors are going to discuss this on Thursday. They have discussed this at the National Economic Council (NEC) and so everybody is involved because we find ourselves in dire straits.
“The NNPC has explained. What they are doing is import-dependent. Deregulation is import-dependent but they are doing bulk purchasing. So, they can get discounts. They are also using a foreign exchange that is discounted for them. They are not buying from the parallel market. So, all these things will be put in a basket and a price will emerge from it”, the minister added.
On electricity tariff hike, Ngige disclosed that the meeting adopted the report of its Ad-Hoc Technical Committee on Electricity Tariffs, made some adjustments and transformed the committee into an implementation committee for the purposes of implementing the recommendations made, including mass metering.
He further clarified: “You will start seeing members of the committee with the Minister of Power, going around now and making sure that the DISCOS put meters for people because there are reports that they don’t want to be distributing meters and that they want to be doing bulk billing and estimated billings. So, we don’t want that.
“There is also a resolution as regards gas companies reducing gas pricing for gas sold to power companies, GENCOS and the rest of them so that the price of electricity per unit will go down and the consumers will benefit from it. We have given the marching orders for them to do so.
“Some paperwork has to be done and once that is done, price of electricity will go down and once it goes down, the consumers will benefit”, Ngige added
The minister further confirmed that the committee also recommended that those forcefully migrated by distribution companies from lower-paying bands C and D to upper bands A and B should petition the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and they will be brought back to their former bands and the affected DisCos will be penalized.
