In 3-months, Nigeria imports 6.5 billion litres of fuel

• by Funmi Johnson
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Between April and June this year, the country imported 6.5 billion litres of petroleum products, figures obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics have indicated.

The Petroleum Products Report, which was obtained on Friday in Abuja, showed that the country imported 4.79 billion litres of Premium Motor Spirits (petrol), and 1.11 billion litres of Automotive Gas Oil (diesel) during the period.

It showed that 43.79 million litres of Household Kerosene and 200.39 million litres of Aviation Turbine Kerosene were also imported into the country during the three-month period.

The report stated that the month of April recorded the highest volume of petrol imported into the country at 1.78 billion litres while the highest volume of diesel and household kerosene was imported in June.

It read in part, “The petroleum products importation statistics for Q2 reflected that 4.79 billion litres of the PMS, 1.11 billion litres of AGO, 43.79 million litres of the HHK and 200.39 million litres of the ATK were imported into the country.

“The month of April recorded the highest volume of the PMS imported into the country at 1.78 billion litres.”

A further analysis of the report showed that the country imported 1.78 billion litres of the PMS in April while May and June had 1.67 billion and 1.3 billion litres, respectively.

For diesel, 309.9 million litres were imported in April while May and June had 387.43 million and 408.15 million litres, respectively.

Aviation fuel had an import volume of 14.7 million litres in April while May and June recorded importation of 64.18 million and 121.5 million litres in that order.

In recent times, the importation of petroleum products has constituted a major source of pressure on the foreign exchange market.

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele, had while addressing journalists shortly after the Monetary Policy Committee meeting in April said the apex bank would support investors to build refineries.

He said the CBN would use the strength of its reserves, which he put then at $49.69bn to support the development of the nation’s refineries by supporting investors in that sector.

He said, “The Federal Government is encouraging private sector investors to come into refineries and what we do expect is when those private investors are coming into Nigeria to do business, if they are foreign, they will come with dollars and won’t need our dollars but if they are local and would want to import equipment of course they would need our dollars.

“We have a lot of dollars to allocate to them to bring in their equipment and I assure anyone who is interested in going into refineries business that if you have your licence, we’ll accord priority to you to import the equipment because we badly need it here.

“We all know that importation of petroleum products into the country constitutes a large portion of our import and as some point rising to about 25 per cent of our import volume. And we think of accelerating the process of investors going into refineries, it will further help to conserve our forex for importation of goods we cannot produce in Nigeria.”