…As Senate says NNPC, marketers responsible for fuel scarcity***
The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), has projected the country’s GDP growth to rise by three percent in 2018, given the prevailing economic fundamentals and government’s commitment to sustain economic reforms.
The Chamber made this projection in a statement signed by the Director General of LCCI, Mr. Muda Yusuf in a statement. He said: “The chamber also projects oil price to average around $50 per barrel; External reserve to hit $40 billion mark; and headline inflation at 13 per cent.” He noted that the fundamentals of the economy are improving with numerous opportunities and potentials.
Crude oil prices and output levels have recovered, foreign reserve is improving, and inflation is on a steady decline, adding that, it is expected that these impressive outcomes will be sustained into a better part of 2018.
Muda said for the country to sustain the present recovery and achieve the growth forecast, there is need for aggressive investment in infrastructure to boost productivity in the economy, reduction in multiplicity of exchange rates, alignment of procurement policies at all levels of government to support domestic investment. Others include investment policy that would protect domestic investors, tax policy that is investment friendly, interest rate policy that is investment friendly and current reforms in such critical sectors as power, agriculture, solid minerals and oil and gas should be sustained.
“The executive orders signed in May this year should be fully enforced to improve the way government does business and thereby improve the business environment”, he said. Speaking further, Yusuf said, “The situation with the manufacturing sector in 2017 was that of a partial relief, especially with respect to access to foreign exchange.”Manufacturers reported an improvement in the liquidity of the foreign exchange market.
These enhanced their capacity to import raw materials and boosted capacity utilization.” However, he stressed, manufacturers expressed concern with respect to high interest rate between 25-30 per cent.
“This has resulted in high operating cost for manufacturers; dearth of long term funds, infrastructure situation with respect to power and energy and logistics, especially the impact of the bad roads on the cost of transportation, inflow of fake and sub-standard products remains a major challenge for manufacturers in 2017, weak patronage of locally produced goods, especially by government agencies and ministries” he stressed. He said some manufacturers lamented the adverse effect of the activities of the Federal Operations Unit (F.O.U) of the Nigeria Customs Service on their businesses.
“There were recurring instances of arbitrary arrests, impounding of containers duly cleared at the ports and extortion by operatives of the FOU. Concerns were also expressed about indiscriminate valuation queries by the Nigeria Customs Service. These are clearly not in consonance with the vision of ease of doing business currently being pursued by the government” he stated.
In the meantime, the Senate Committee on Petroleum Downstream has blamed the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and marketers over short supply of the petroleum products in the country.
The Committee Chairman, Sen. Kabiru Marafa, stated this on Monday in Gusau during an oversight assignmnet in the state on fuel situation in the country.
Marafa, who was accompanied by a member of the committee, Sen. Abdullahi Danbaba said the inspection was part of the assignment given to the committee by Senate President Bukola Saraki.
“I have directed all members of this committee to go back to their constituencies to investigate the problem at the grassroots so that we take approximate measures to address the scarcity.
“We visited NNPC zonal depot Gusau to find out the quantity of fuel supply to the depot and we noticed short supply of the commodity.
“We are going to present our findings to the senate. It is very disturbing to see the suffering faced by people due to fuel scarcity in the country.
“We question the NNPC over this issue because the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Maikanti Baru said they had doubled the quantity of daily supply of the product, but it is not available to the public.
“Another unfortunate thing is the attitude of our filling stations owners who sell this commodity to the public; they are involved in one or two malpractices.
”In fact out of the filling stations we visited only two have complied with the government directives in this regard,” he said.
Marafa commended the state Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) field office in ensuring compliance at the filling stations.
The senator urged the DPR to sanction filling stations involved in hoarding and selling above approved government price of N145 per litre.
Additional report from Vanguard
