Nigerians earlier thought the newly constructed refinery in Nigeria by Dangote will drastically reduce the pump price of petrol in Nigeria but in contrary to that the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, has said when Dangote Refinery kicks off next year, it may not significantly reduce the price of petrol because the refinery will be selling at the international price.
Mrs Ahmed said this is because the refinery is located at the Export Processing Zone in Lagos State.
The minister spoke on NTA’s ‘Good Morning Nigeria’ programme on Monday, adding that the only thing Nigeria would not need to pay is the shipping cost.
Mrs Ahmed said: “What we are doing is enabling the petroleum sector to actually grow. There have been a number of refineries that have been licensed for several years. None of them was willing to start refining under the regime that we had were fuel was controlled.
“The Dangote refinery is sitting within an Export Processing Zone so they are insulated from that. When we buy fuel from Dangote, we will be buying fuel at the international market price. The only savings that we will be making is the savings of freight which is shipping.
“But we will still have landing cost; labour cost and the marketers will still have to put a margin. These refineries being those that are supposed to have come to operate can now come in because they are assured that when they produce, they can sell at market rate and recover their investments and make some reasonable profits.”