The Federal Government, on Wednesday, March 4, 2015, promised that the surging scarcity in the supply of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS popularly referred to a fuel would by weekend, be a story of the past.
It was learnt that major petroleum marketers said they have deployed 495 truckloads of petrol, with a minimum capacity of 33,000 litres each to Lagos and Abuja.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who spoke after a meeting with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN; Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA; oil marketers and depot owners, stated that the Federal Government had addressed all issues in contention with the marketers, including those on foreign exchange rate differentials and payment for subsidy, Vanguard reports.
She disclosed that the federal government would pay a sum of N30 billion, about N6 trillion, exchange rate differentials owed marketers in the past few months.
Meanwhile, the federal government has started offsetting the N185 billion debts owed the marketers with the issuance of Sovereign Debt Notes, SDNs, which is a guarantee used for the payment of imported petroleum products.
She pointed out that President Jonathan was doing everything possible to nip the problem in the bud as soon as practicable.
Okonjo-Iweala said, “In the next few days, the queues will dissipate, the situation will be addressed and everything will return to normal. At the Federal Executive Council meeting today (yesterday), the issue was discussed in terms of pushing forward and making sure things get back to normal.”
“On Tuesday, 137 trucks were moved to Lagos, while 139 trucks were for Abuja. You can see that the amount we moved to Abuja on Tuesday was far more than the quantity we moved on Monday. It normally takes between three and four days to transport the fuel from Lagos to Abuja, hence we believe the queues will ease off by weekend latest.
“Our actions are deliberate to ensure that the queues vanish and normalcy returns. I want to tell Nigerians that the tougher days are over, normalcy is expected to return pretty soon.”
