Nigeria: Press spotlights plans by govt to ban cooking gas export to crash price, others

APA – Lagos (Nigeria)
The plan by the Nigerian Government to stop the exportation of cooking gas, in a bid to increase its volume domestically so as to warrant a crash in price is one of the trending stories in Nigerian newspapers on Friday.
The Punch reports that the Federal Government is to stop the exportation of Liquefied Petroleum Gas, popularly called cooking gas, in a bid to increase its volume domestically so as to warrant a crash in price.
It stated on Thursday that LPG producers in Nigeria and key stakeholders in the industry had been told to stop exporting the commodity out of Nigeria, following the recent jump in the cost of cooking gas.
Although the volume of LPG consumption in Nigeria depends on the specific timeframe, figures obtained from the Nigerian Midstream Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority indicated that in 2022, the total cooking gas consumption across the country was 1.4 million metric tonnes.
Data from the agency put total domestic production during the review period as 600,000MT, while imports accounted for 800,000MT.
In 2021, total consumption was estimated at around 800,000MT, as domestic production was about 300,000MT, while the volume that was imported in that year was put at 500,000MT.
Cooking gas consumption has been increasing significantly, with ambitious targets to reach five million metric tonnes by 2029, as LPG dealers stated that though Nigeria exports the commodity, the country relies heavily on imports to meet domestic demand.
This implies that the Federal Government could stop the export of over 600,000MT of cooking gas based on its drive to crash the price of the commodity locally.
The newspaper says that Air Peace has said it will begin direct flight operations to London on March 30, 2024, with the inaugural flight scheduled for 12:10 am.
The announcement was made during a prelaunch forum organised by the airline to engage travel agencies and partners involved in the upcoming London flight operations.
The Chief Operating Officer of the airline, Oluwatoyin Olajide, assured stakeholders that the London operations would be carried out daily with Boeing 777 aircraft and Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft.
Olajide said, “The service will be operated with our Boeing 777 aircraft and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, one of the most modern and efficient aircraft in the skies. We will be launching with special promo fares and attractive plans for agents.
“Operating daily, this service will also offer several other benefits that give Air Peace an edge over the competition. It’s a direct flight without stopovers and offers unbeatable fares. The specifics of these offers and other unique selling points will be presented as this engagement progresses.”
“We want you to know that Air Peace’s operational expansion and milestones are driven by our ambition to continually connect cities and ease the burden of air travel while fostering economic prosperity across nations.”
The Vanguard newspaper reports that the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Dr. Olayemi Cardoso, yesterday, begged Nigerians to be patient, as the management of the apex bank is doing everything possible to ensure that the Naira is strengthened.
Cardoso said this at the 2024 public lecture entitled: ‘Recent Developments in a Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market: Issues, Options and Way Forward’, organised by the Nigerian Economic Society, NES, at the CBN Centre of Excellence Hall, University of Ibadan.
The CBN governor, who was represented at the event by Dr. Usman Opanachi of the Department of Monetary Policy, CBN said: “Anytime the Naira is on trial, the CBN is also on trial. We are working day and night to address the challenges and we hope things will work out.
“The exchange rate features nearly in every sector. The exchange rate and inflation are very high now. The exchange rate is a problem.
“Excess demand for forex in Nigeria is a legendary problem. It has just been there and over the years, the bank has implemented various strategies to address this problem. Those strategies have only been able to provide some temporary relief.
“The Central Bank of Nigeria does not supply or produce dollars. It is the naira that it produces. The CBN management thinks when you hold the price of a commodity that is determined by forex down artificially, a time comes when you will not be able to do that.
“The thinking of the new management of CBN is that the policies you have are intended to address the problem. The approach the management has adopted is the market forces approach. The bank now allows the market forces to play a greater role in the determination of the price of naira.”
Delivering the lecture, a renowned economist, Prof Sam Olofin, said it would be difficult for the CBN to control the foreign exchange saying the parallel market forces have taken dominance.
The newspaper says that the Nigerian Government has warned manufacturers of cement in the country that it may open the border to allow for the importation of cement if they keep on increasing their prices indiscriminately.
Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Arc Ahmed Dangiwa, issued this warning at an emergency meeting held with cement and building materials manufacturers in Abuja on Tuesday.
The meeting was called following the astronomical rise in the price of cement in the past few days.
The manufacturers had jacked up the price of a bag of the product from about N5000 to N10,000 in the past two weeks.
At a meeting with Dave Umahi, the Minister of Works on Monday, the manufacturers had insisted that they could only reduce the price to N7000 if the government addressed some of their concerns, including the bad roads across the country and the increasing cost of gas.
They also complained about the declining value of the naira in relation to the dollar.
But while addressing the manufacturers on Tuesday, Dangiwa who called on the manufacturers to be more patriotic as he noted that raw materials for production of cement such as limestone, clay, silica sand, and gypsum are being sourced in the country and not being imported and as such, they should not be dollar-rated.
GIK/APA