The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Friday insisted that there is no increment in the ex-depot price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) also known as petrol this month.
NNPC announced this via a post on their official Twitter handle @NNPCgroup. “#NNPC Insists No Increase in Ex-Depot Price of PMS in March,” it simply tweeted.
Sylva in a statement said, “Neither Mr. President who is the Minister of Petroleum Resources nor my humble self who deputises for him as Minister of State, has approved that the pump price of petrol should be increased by one naira. I would therefore urge you to disregard this misleading information.” This was in reaction to the trend on social media with the hashtag #FuelPriceHike with users reacting to a template released by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPRA) showing that the new price of petrol has reached N212.6 per litre.
According to the template which the PPPRA released in the early hours of Friday and later deleted, petrol is expected to sell at a lower retail price of N209.61 and at an upper retail price of N212.61. NNPC in the tweet, on Friday, ruled out any increment in the ex-depot price simply tweeting that, “#NNPC Insists No Increase in Ex-Depot Price of PMS in March.”
The NNPC had earlier promised that the petrol price would remain static in March to allow smooth negotiations between the government and labour unions.
