As NNPC Imports 500m Litres of Fuel...Fuel Crisis 'll End this Weekend, Says Obasanjo * PENGASSAN denies FG's sabotage claim

www.thisdayonline.com By Mike Oduniyi in Lagos and Kola Ologbondiyan in Abuja

President Olusegun Oba-sanjo yesterday assured Nigerians that fuel queues across the nation would disappear this weekend. The president's reassurance came yesterday as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) started pushing about 500 million litres of petroleum products from its imported cargoes into the market in a bid to halt the scarcity being experienced by people. Also reacting to the fuel scarcity problem, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) countered the claim by the Federal Govern-ment that the fuel situation was traceable to sabotage. The association said only a complete deregulation of the down stream petroleum sector would solve the problem. Obasanjo spoke when he received a delegation of the Manufacturer's Association of Nigeria (MAN) at the State House. The MAN delegation had come to inform the president that the distress in the manufacturing sector is becoming worse. Acoording to the president, "there is enough fact. This scarcity is just a temporary thing. By this weekend, Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and other cities would have gotten over the problem." He said his administration would continue to do all within its powers to boost the productivity of local manufacturers. He further said that the Federal Government would continue to implement fiscal and monetary policies that would lead to a further reduction of interest rates charged by commercial banks in the country. "We will keep working to create an economic environment that allows the Central Bank to keep bringing down its Minimum Rediscount Rate (MRR)," Obasanjo said. The president however said that government expected that commercial banks in the country would keep to their commitment of ensuring that their rates never exceeded the MRR by more than four percentage points. He disclosed that his administration was considering the prohibition of the importation of more items which are being produced locally in order to boost industrial utilisation capacity within the country. "We all have to make sacrifices to put things right in this country and this administration is determined to do everything possible to get local production up," he said. He also assured the MAN delegation that the Federal Government would implement additional measures to ensure that raw materials and other legitimate imports are cleared expeditiously by Customs at Nigerian Ports. He added that the present administration has succeeded in achieving reasonable stability in the exchange rate of the naira. Obasanjo also told the delegation that the National Economic Council would look into the persisting problem of multiple levies which the manufactuers said were hampering the movement of their products across state boundaries. Lamenting the state of the manufacturing sector earlier, MAN President Charles Ugwuh, who submitted to the president, the association's input on how to manage the economy in the subsisting year 2003, said the nation is losing money in non-oil exports. The association noted that in spite of the administration's commitment to developing Small Medium Industries (SMEs) as a strategy of attacking poverty, unless access to funding is improved for this sector through the Bank of Industry, the growth of the economy will continue to be stalled. Ugwuh argued that "the recent intervention of Mr. President which led to reduction in interest rates to 22.5 per cent" and "a further reduction in MRR to 16.5 per cent recently implemented by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has however not elicited corresponding reduction in interest rates." The MAN president expressed the association's gratitude for the current campaign by the Federal Government "for patronage of Made-in-Nigeria goods as well as the directive issued on patronage and use of locally- made products in public offices." He added that "capital projects embarked upon by government currently have little or no component of local inputs outside labour." Corroborating the assurance by the president that the fuel crisis will end by weekend, a meeting between the NNPC and major marketers which held in Lagos yesterday also agreed to resolve the fuel scarcity problem immediately. According to a data made available to journalists at the end of the meeting, three vessels carrying a total of 65.32 million litres of imported fuel had berthed and were discharging at both the Atlas Cove and Apapa jetties. Another 405.23 million litres on board about 10 vessels are being expected in the country from next week. The Head of Marketers Operations Committee, Mr Obafemi Olawore, said that eight million litres of fuel had been delivered to stations around Lagos by mid-day yesterday, while a foreign vessel MT Beta, was already discharging another 13 million litres of fuel. "Between now and Monday, we are expecting three big vessels of 16,000 tonnes each or 20 million litres. By Sunday, the scarcity should be over," said Olawore. Also speaking to newsmen, the Apapa Terminal Manager of African Petroleum Plc, Mr Ibrahim Dikko, said the company had already loaded a 35 fuel trucks for delivery to its stations in Lagos. NNPC Group Managing Director, Mr Jackson Gaius-Obaseki said the meeting with the marketers was to end the fuel crisis. "We needed all of us to sit together to see how we can correct the situation," he said. Gaius-Obaseki reiterated his earlier claim that the shortage of refined petroleum products in the international market, due to the Venezuelan strike and the US-Iraq stand off, upturned the corporation's fuel import programme and created the scarcity. The strike in Venezuela, he said, saw the South American country gulping about 30 cargoes of refined oil in six weeks while many countries were also stock piling fuel for fear that the US war against Iraq may lead to scarcity. He said the situation raised prices, forcing importers to demand higher premium compared to what the NNPC was ready to offer. The NNPC chief however, added that while negotiations on this development was going on, the strike by workers of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) precipitated the crisis. The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Profes-sor Jerry Gana on Wednesday blamed the cause of the fuel crisis on moves by some people to discredit the present administration. Gana linked the crisis to the DPR strike, which he said was engineered. But the umbrella body for senior workers in the oil industry, PENGASSAN, in a press statement signed by Comrades Sina Luwoye and Kenneth Narebor, President and General Secretary respectively, faulted any link of the DPR workers' strike to the present fuel scarcity in the country. PENGASSAN said it viewed Gana's statement "as an attempt to paint our association in a bad light considering the inconveniences the fuel scarcity has caused to millions of Nigerians." The union, which backed the DPR workers's strike, said the industrial action was to press the demands for the autonomy of the DPR, to request the National Assembly to pass the proposed bill on the setting up of the Independent Petroleum Inspec-torate Commissions and the payment of outstanding salaries and allowances. "The current scarcity of petroleum products in the country has nothing to do with the strike which had been suspended, and our members return to work at their different locations throughout the country," said the union. PENGASSAN said as a way out of the crisis, the Federal Government should ensure the following:

• That all depots in the country be made to operate throughout the weekend to make up for the current shortfalls until normalcy returns,
• That there should be supply intervention to all stations in major cities like Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Onitsha, Ibadan and other axial roads,
• That the NNPC should apply through the appropriate government department to the National Assembly for budgetary allocation in order to ensure adequate supply security between now and the forthcoming election. "The above measures can only assuage the fuel crisis for a short term, we foresee a situation where there will be a major crisis from June 2003 when cash backing subsidizing fuel import will be exhausted," warned PENGASSAN.