Crude Oil Refiners Association of Nigeria, CORAN, has told the Nigerian federal Government to peg foreign exchange at N1000 per dollar to crash the price of Dangote Refinery’s petrol to below N600 per liter.
The spokesperson of CORAN, Eche Idoko disclosed this in a statement.
He was speaking amid the current hike in the pump of petrol to between N950 and N1,100 per liter in Nigeria.
This comes as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited announced a fresh petrol price hike last week across its retail outlets following the lifting of Dangote Petrol.
The State-owned firm had justified the petrol price hike on the cost of Dangote fuel which was sold at N898 per litre.
However, Dangote Refinery had blamed the current pricing of its petrol on the cost of crude oil at the international market.
Reacting to the development, Idoko urged the federal government to intervene through FX pegging to crash the price of petrol.
“For instance, you can say, you are using N1,000 as an exchange rate for this dollar deal, for the locally refined petroleum products. And like that, you will see a significant drop in the price.
“As it is right now, this pricing you see is a reflection of what the price will look like if there is no intervention at all, because of how the naira is doing and because of what crude is doing in the international market.
“But if the government intervenes by way of naira sales and pegging the dollar exchange rate for crude transactions at a reasonably low rate, you will see an improvement.
“This is different from paying money as a subsidy. You are only just putting mechanisms in place to ensure the product is cheap,” he said.
