NNPC to be solely responsible for petroleum products imports – Emefiele

As parts of effort to coordinate the importation of petroleum products, Godwin Emefiele, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), hasrevealed that the Federal Government is working on a situation where only the Nigerian National Pe­troleum Corporation (NNPC) will import the products into the country.

Emefiele, revealed this in an interview withFinancial Times of London recently,  according to him, “ President MohammaduBuhari has promised to reduce importation of petro­leum products by ensuring that our refineries work. Our refin­eries are working now, Warri and Port Harcourt have started producing, they have not ob­tained the optimal capacity but they will. Kaduna refinery will start working this month”.

He added; “Now, there are other actions that the presidency is putting in place to ensure that we reduce importation of petroleum prod­ucts where the NNPC will solely, almost solely be responsible for procuring re­fined petroleum.” “Those who are importing pe­troleum products will only just need to go to the NNPC and pick up petroleum products. So in that area I would say that we are already moving in the direction of reducing the import of pe­troleum products. And we will achieve it.”

Emefiele however revealed that President Buhari’sis working on way of recouping stolen oil rev­enues which he said were depos­ited in banks. According to him, CBN will also assist in drilling them once we get to that stage.