The federal government has pegged the approved pump price of petrol at N86 beginning from the first day of 2016.

The Federal Government, through the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), on Tuesday 29/12/2015 approved new pump prices of petrol starting from January 1 to March 31, 2016 under a revised pricing template.

The agency also announced the approval of the first quarter 2016 petrol import allocation of three million metric tonnes to the NNPC and other oil marketers.

Under the new pricing template, the government approved two pump prices – one for the retail outlets of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which will sell at N86 a litre, and another for retail outlets operated by private business concerns in the downstream petroleum sector, which will dispense at N86.50 a litre.

The Executive Secretary of the PPPRA, Farouk Ahmed, disclosed this to journalists in Abuja. He said NNPC was expected to sell petrol at N86 per litre to customers at its retail outlets, while other operators would sell at N86.50k per litre.

He said both open market prices reflect a drop of N1 and 50k respectively from the current official price of N87 per litre, which will no longer obtain after December 31.

Ahmed added that the announcement followed the approval granted by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, for the implementation of the revised template.

Although the PPPRA boss was silent on whether the government would still subsidise petrol, he noted that the new template would be reviewed quarterly with respect to the price of crude oil in the international market.

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