Minister says FG spent N4.74T on fuel importation in 2016

The Federal Government of Nigeria has spent about N4.74trillion on the importation of petroleum products in the last one year, Dr.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources said the sum is an amount that is made up of N3.4trillion for the actual products and N1.34tn on logistics.

Speaking in Abuja on Thursday, June 9, 2017, Kachikwu said: “The importation of petroleum products between January and December of last year amounted to about 20 million metric tonnes. A total amount of N3.4tn was spent.

“The consumption of foreign exchange from the Central Bank of Nigeria was approximately 30 per cent of the CBN’s total foreign exchange outlay, and the logistic cost of that importation was about N1.34tn within the same one year period,” he said.

Kachikwu used the opportunity to explain the need to end the importation of refined petroleum products, saying “the domestic refining capacity as of today is six million litres out of a total consumption of about 35 million litres, averaging less than 25 per cent.

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“In the midst of this sort of statistics, it is absolutely critical that we move in to try to end importation of products, improve our refineries and get them up to 100 per cent nameplate.”

Kachikwu noted that the government had neither given out any of the refineries to private investors as concessions nor had disposed them.