Nigeria Imported 95.28 Billion Litres Of Petroleum Products In 4years
Between January 2014 and December 2017, the country imported 95.28 billion litres of petroleum products such as Premium Motor Spirit (petrol), Automotive Gas and Oil (diesel) and Household Kerosene.
The figure was contained in the Petroleum Products’ Importation Report obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics in Abuja.
An analysis of the report showed that during the four-year period, the importation of PMS accounted for a huge chunk of the figure at about 73.3 billion litres.
This is about 76.9 per cent of the total volume of petroleum products imported into the country during the period under review.
Petrol was followed by diesel importation at 16.28 billion litres, while 5.63 billion litres of kerosene were imported into the country during the four-year period.
For PMS, 18.57 billion litres were imported into the country in 2014. This represented an average daily import of 50.88 million litres that year.
The figure rose to 18.79 billion litres in 2015, representing an average daily import of 51.49 million litres, before declining marginally to 18.6 billion litres, or a daily average of 50.98 million litres in 2016.
In the 2017 fiscal period, the volume of petrol import further dropped to 17.31 billion litres, which was an average of 47.43 million litres imported daily.
For diesel importation, the NBS report stated that 5.63 billion litres were imported, thus: 3.48 billion litres in 2014; 3.87 billion litres in 2015; 4.66 billion litres in 2016; and 4.27 billion litres in 2017.
These represent a daily average of 9.55 million, 10.61 million, 12.74 million and 11.71 million litres for 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, respectively.
For kerosene, the report noted that Nigeria imported 2.94 billion litres in 2014, adding that this declined to 1.8 billion, 548.65 million and 340.33 million litres in 2015, 2016 and 2017, respectively.
In terms of daily average, the report put this at 8.05 million, 4.99 million, 1.49 million and 0.93 million litres in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, respectively.
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 stated that the CBN would use the strength of its reserves, which he put then at $49.69bn, to support the development of refineries by supporting investors in that sector.
He had stated, “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 will want to import equipment, of course, they will need our dollars.
“We have lots of dollars to allocate to them to bring in their equipment and I assure anyone who is interested in going into the refinery business that if you have your licence, we accord priority to you to import those equipment, because we badly need it here.
“We all know that importation of petroleum products into the country constitutes a large portion of our imports and at some point rising to about 25 per cent of our import volume, and we think that if we accelerate the process of investors going into refineries, it will further help to conserve our forex for importation of goods we cannot produce in Nigeria.”
