Petrol marketers express concerns about ghost buying at petrol stations

Petrol marketers have lamented low patronage at their retail outlets nationwide with the price of a litre of petrol now above N1,000 in most filling stations across Nigeria.

The National President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria, PETROAN, Billy Gillis-Harry, while on the Monday edition of Channels Television’s The Morning Brief breakfast programme, said marketers are now cutting workers and shifts because of high pricing and low returns on investment.

Gillis-Harry said, “Marketers, retail outlet owners, all of us in the industry are finding it difficult to cope with the current situation, we used to buy 45,000 litres of fuel a couple of months ago for less than 8.5 million naira but today, we have to cough out about 49 million naira to buy the product.

“Financial institutions are not coming to our rescue. The cost of money is so high, it is so difficult to even sell, what we get to our retail outlets is not quickly bought because Nigerians also have the challenge with their buying power.”

On his part, IPMAN spokesman Ukadike Chinedu said filling stations nationwide have become ghost places as middle-class Nigerians have abandoned their vehicles and embraced public transportation.

“Most of the money we use in investing is bank money. It’s being borrowed and the interest rate is also high. There is no return on investment because the more we sell, the more we make profits,” Chinedu said.

The two unions urged President Bola Tinubu to provide N100bn as a seed fund for oil marketers to stay afloat, just like the aviation and agricultural sectors.