January 4, 2018: Oil marketers in Nigeria may have opted to lobby the federal government to consider and grant them some form of tax holidays and other incentives that would enable them resume importation of petrol into the country, THISDAY learnt last night in Abuja.

THISDAY gathered from sources that were at the meeting held between the marketers and the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, in his office, that the marketers who were reportedly pushing for a pump price increase in the face of their inabilities to bring in petrol into the country at cost effective rates, allegedly made this proposal to the government.

The proposal, it was learnt, was to appeal to the government to provide some kind of palliatives that would help them cut their costs of importation. Though the government had in 2016 stated that it had created a special forex window to enable them access forex from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to fund their products’ importation, the marketers repeatedly claimed they were not getting this from the CBN.

However, the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity stated that the request for tax incentives was part of agreements reached at the meeting of the committee the government set up to engage the marketers on ways to find a lasting solution to the scarcity of petrol which recently resurfaced across the country.

The sources equally disclosed that the meeting unanimously agreed that the pump price of Petrol should not be increased, and left at its present rate, but that oil marketers would rather adopt cost-cutting strategies to continue to do business in the downstream petroleum sector.

Also, four sub-committees were inaugurated at the meeting to help address the challenges of fuel supply across the country, some of which are the logistics and business conduct committees.

“There is no planned to increase fuel price, and the minister said it should not be contemplated. Even, none of us wanted the fuel price to rise. What we talked about was tax holidays and other things in that line,” one of the sources said.

He explained that “all stakeholders agreed to look inward and improve efficiency so that we can cut down cost and resume our businesses.”

Earlier, the minister had said it would brief the presidency on the outcome of the meeting before talking to journalists, but the meeting, as learnt, was chaired by Kachikwu, while heads of some parastatals under the ministry, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), members of Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria, (DAPPMA), Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) and labour Union officials were reportedly in attendance. – ThisDay