President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has urged Nigeria-based refineries to look inward and consider supplying enough petrol and petroleum products for local consumption to stop the persistent reliance on importation.
He said this would enable the channelling of foreign exchange into the development of the real sector.
The president stated this Tuesday during a review meeting of the Implementation Committee on the Naira-based sales of crude oil and refined products at State House, Abuja.
The president said using the naira was conceived to remove the exchange rate hurdle.
“Whatever solution we proffer in crude oil and refined products sales in naira should not take us back to our experience in the last 40 years.
“There can be cost and revenue adjustment in the oil sector, but the issue is that the government will not have to go back to the old way of doing things,” the president said.
The president advised stakeholders to use Afreximbank as a settlement bank to resolve the naira pricing for crude and refined products. Afreximbank is already on board as the financial adviser.
“The market must determine what we are doing. Once you allow the market to determine the profit and loss, independent marketers and the government side can meet on the worksheet. I want the issues resolved without future waste of time,’’ he added.
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, said the administration’s groundbreaking steps to sell crude in naira would not be reversed, and the government would not be involved in determining the rate of exchange for the oil sector.
The President and Chief Executive of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, told the president that the refinery had more than 500 million litres of fuel in reserve after supplying 400 million to the economy.
He said the refinery could collaborate with the other refineries managed by NNPC Ltd to meet an estimated 32 million litres of local petrol needs.
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