FG, Labour To Meet Mid-April On Petrol Price Adjustment
The federal government and the organised labour will reconvene their negotiations to finalise decision on appropriate pricing of petrol and electricity tariff by middle of April.
Economic Confidential gathered that the meeting will hold before the commencement of the Ramadan.
A source privy to the negotiations told our correspondent at the weekend that as part of moves to resolve the contentious issue of the appropriate pricing for petrol, the federal government side has been consulting others with a view to building a consensus on the matter.
He said the federal government had been considering the report of the joint committee of representatives of the federal government and organised labour on measures to apply to moderate the fuel price template.
Last week, NNPC had lamented what it described as the heavy financial burden it was being made to bear in bearing the extra cost of petrol due to the differential in the landing cost and pump price of the commodity owing to the rising cost of crude oil in the international market.
It said that the current N165 pump price was no longer feasible, adding that the actual price should be N212 or above.
But the source told our correspondent that the new thinking of the government was that the appropriate pricing of petrol would now be decided by the various tiers of government as represented at the National Economic Council (NEC).
The source said: “The federal government has decided that the issue of subsidy should be discussed at the appropriate forum along with other tiers of government. As you know, NNPC has declared underrecovery of funds used in importation of petrol and the money used by the corporation to source petroleum products is from the Federation Account operated by the three tiers of government. So, we intend to discuss and arrive at a consensus on the modules to be adopted before meeting with labour.”
While speaking on the outcome of a bipartite meeting of the federal government and the organised labour in Abuja, Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, had said that the labour had investigated the report of the Technical Committee on Petrol Pricing Framework as agreed at the last meeting and made its submissions. The NNPC also presented a report.
He said: “The labour side saw that they (NNPC) were making some points and like I said, it is work in progress.”
