The federal government has set aside an extra N108 billion to completely clear subsidy payments to oil marketers for the year 2015.
Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Farouk Ahmed, who disclosed this in Abuja while announcing the new pump price of petrol, said the money is meant to clear payment for the month of October, November and December, 2015.
Recall that government recently paid an outstanding N407, 077 billion subsidy claims to oil marketers which catered for payment up to September, 2015. Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, said the payments include arrears from the 2014 financial year as well as payments for 2015.
Meanwhile Ahmed said the PPPRA has completed verification of marketer’s documents for the months of October and November, which would be sent to the Debt Management Office (DMO) before finally being handled by the ministry of finance.
He said, “For October, November and December, PPPRA has been verifying subsidy claims, the verification only commences when the marketers bring in their documentation. So we have been able to verify October and November and we are going to send everything to the DMO for payment.
“Already there has been a budget for that because we have appropriated about N108 billion for these three months, but I can tell you that the figure is way below that. It has come down because of the drop in the price. So that will be processed to DMO and then the ministry of finance will handle that,” Ahmed said.
He further maintained that marketers will not have problems with payment of subsidy arrears for 2015 because the federal government is up to date with the payment.
Meanwhile, the managing director of the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, has disclosed that the agency will effect from this month, begin real time tracking of products distribution with a view to check diversion and artificially induced scarcity.
She explained that the agency already has been involved in manual tracking of every truck leaving any of its depots whether in Lagos, Warri, Oghara, Port Harcourt or Calabar, but now want to begin real time tracking.
“So that when you stop and you divert from your route we are able to get real time, in the meantime, in addition to already publishing the stations the trucks go to, we are going to give Nigerians the phone numbers of the tanker driver and the station those tanker drivers are supposed to deliver the products to so that everybody helps us in tracking product supply,” she said.