The Petroleum Product Pricing and Regulatory Agency said on Thursday it did not have records of the volume of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol, being consumed daily in Nigeria.
The agency said the only record available to it was that of the PMS being discharged at the various depots nationwide and the volume trucked out of the depots.
The Director, Finance and Administration of PPPRA, J.T Peters, said these while appearing before the House of Representatives Committee on Finance.
The panel rounded off on Thursday a 10-day interactive session with heads of federal ministries, departments and agencies on the 2022-2024 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper.
The PPPRA was appearing before the panel for the third time in four days, having being turned back on two occasion for presenting conflicting figures.
Peter said the issue of smuggling had made it difficult to determine the volume of petrol consumed in the country daily.
Petrol subsidy to gulp N102.96bn in March
“We were not here when the NNPC made its presentation. The issue of daily consumption has been an issue in the ministry and based on the challenges in determining the issue of consumption, the ministry decided to form a committee known as Operation White,” he said.
According to him, members of the committee are drawn from the PPPRA, NNPC, the Department of Petroleum Resources, Nigeria Customs Service and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.
Peter said, “The most challenging factor that makes national consumption very difficult is the issue of smuggling. That is why Customs are present in the committee. So, the figures that is used most time for consumption is the truck-out figure from the various facilities nationwide. That figure comes mainly from PPPRA. That was the figures we gave you on Tuesday for 2018, 2019 and 2020.”
