The country’s monthly petrol import was reduced by about 1 billion litres after President Bola Tinubu removed fuel subsidy in June, a report by the National Bureau of Statistics has shown.
The NBS report indicated that the country received fuel importation of 2.09 litres in January 2023, while 1.99 billion litres was imported in February of the same year.
It was 2.29 billion litres in March; 1.91 billion litres in April and 2.01 billion litres in May last year.
Recall that Tinubu removed the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit on May 29, having a significant effect on the importation of the product the following month.
Our correspondent observed that the quantity of PMS imported in June, the first post-subsidy month, dropped to 1.64 billion litres.
The downward slope got deeper in July when the import was reduced to 1.45 billion litres.
In August, petrol imported into the country was down to 1.09 billion, a reduction of over 1 billion litres year-on-year from the 2.23 billion litres imported in August 2022.
The NBS report showed that Nigeria did not produce a litre of PMS locally in 2021, 2022, and in the first half of 2023.
However, diesel and kerosene were produced locally during that period, due to a lack of functioning oil refineries.
In its key highlights for the Petroleum Products Distribution Statistics Half Year 2023, the NBS said in H12023, PMS truck out stood at 11.48 billion litres, indicating a 5.83 per cent decrease when compared to 12.19 billion litres recorded in the first half of 2022.
Also, 26.07m litres of kerosene were locally produced compared to 22.33m litres in the first half of 2022.
For Automotive Gas Oil (diesel), 55.48m litres were produced in the first half of 2023, higher relative to 50.19m litres reported in the corresponding period of the previous year.
Though the 11.94 billion litres of PMS imported in H12023 was higher compared to 11.56 billion litres in H12022, the drop in June, July and August testified to the effect of the subsidy removal as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company remains the only importer of fuel at the moment.
Quadri Olaitan is a journalist and contributor to Freelanews.com, covering news, public affairs, and human-interest stories.
