Importers of petroleum products
in Nigeria worrying about investing money on imports to protect their
investments from bad debt which may result from the planned removal of
subsidy from petroleum products.
On Monday, the
Federal Government had disclosed their plans to remove fuel subsidy from
next year, as a result of which price of petrol can shoot up from N87 to N97
per litre. However the scarcity of petrol in the country continue to
hard the common people with some marketers are selling their products
for N120 to as high as N150.
Not
only this sudden increase in prices hurting the spending budget of the
people, many marketers have also began to attach various condition along
with their products which has heightened the consumer woes.
According
to sources, the fuel scarcity would continue to haunt the consumers
till 2016 since importers are now becoming more cautious due to planned
subsidy removal which is likely to have an effect on their subsidy
outstanding. In spite of the government who recently paid N522 billion
subsidy claims in the supplementary budgets, marketers still are
hesitant of investing money on the third quarter import programmes due
to perceived policy inconsistency of the Federal Government.
The
marketers say that the exchange rate differential is still a burden on
them which has not been cleared by the government while forex
availability is another issue that needs to be addressed. The Federal
Government argued that the expenditure in excess of N1 trillion on fuel
subsidy in 2015 alone, the 2016 budget deficit would increase.
Motorists
and consumer have all urged the Federal Government to address the issue
urgently and help the masses from the untold hardship due to this
situation. Oil prices are likely to increase next year as supply and
demand in begin to even.
No comments:
Post a Comment