Price of cooking gas still high as Nigerians need 3m cylinders yearly – NCDMB
Contrary to claims by the managing director of Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) that price of cooking will drop before the end of first quarter, checks by Business Hilights Economic Team over the weekend in parts of Abuja, Port Harcourt and Lagos showed no signs of price crash.
Popular 12.6KG cylinder is still between N4,500 and N5,500.
However, the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) said the country needs no less than three million Liquefied Petroleum Gas also, known as cooking gas cylinders, annually.
Executive Secretary of the Board, Mr Simbi Wabate, on Sunday said the only LPG cylinder manufacturing company in the country located at Isheri in Ogun, has the capacity to produce about 400,000 cooking gas cylinders yearly.
Arguing that this was far below what Nigerian homes required annually, Wabate hinted that the scenario had encouraged the in-flow of substandard and expired LPG cylinders into the country.
According to him, stopping the capital flight has forced the board to conceive what he called “the local manufacture of liquefied gas cylinders’ initiative”.
He said this would create employment opportunities, stop the importation of LPG cylinders and jump-start a new cylinder-producing industry, stressing that the initiative is connected to the Federal Government’s domestic gas utilisation programme aimed at encouraging the use of cooking gas by every home in the country.
He said that studies had shown that for domestic gas utilisation programme to pull through; there was the need to address the availability, affordability and acceptability of LPG and its cylinders by all stakeholders.
