Page 10 - AfrOil Week 22 2021

AfrOil POLICY AfrOil

Abuja seeks to clear bottlenecks

in domestic LPG credit programme

NIGERIA NIGERIA’S government is reportedly looking easier for people to access,” he remarked.
for ways to help local fuel retailers access credits The programme manager was speaking
that Abuja has made available to encourage the around the same time that Habeeb Jaiyeola, the
sale of CNG as motor fuel and LPG as cooking associate director of PricewaterhouseCoopers
fuel. Nigeria, praised the National LPG Expansion
According to Dayo Adeshina, the pro- Implementation Plan. Jaiyeola spoke favoura-
gramme manager of the Office of the Vice bly about the Nigerian government’s decision
Presidency’s National LPG Expansion Imple- to work through CBN to facilitate investment in
mentation Plan, the government has been the domestic LPG trade, saying: “The intent of
evaluating the results of its decision last year the fund is also quite comprehensive and seeks
to distribute NGN250bn ($606mn) worth of to ease funding challenges for all players within
subsidised loans via the Central Bank of Nigeria the LPG value chain.”
(CBN). The results of this process indicate that But he also asserted that Abuja would have
some organisations are having difficulty access- to ensure that the subsidised credits had maxi-
ing the funds, he said. mum impact. Specifically, he said, government
This problem appears to have arisen because officials should review applications carefully,
the commercial banks seeking to secure the enforce repayment agreements and introduce
credits on behalf of fuel retailers hoping to a market-driven pricing system for LPG that
expand the CNG and/or LPG sales are taking allows retailers to recoup their investments. ™
the same approach to the subsidy programme as
they do to commercial lending, Adeshina stated.
This has had the effect of preventing many eligi-
ble sellers from participating in the programme,
he said.
“To access the loan, it is your commer-
cial banks that will approach the CBN,” he
explained. “But unfortunately the banks were
treating it as commercial loans. Typically, they
would ask for the same things they ask when
you ask for normal loans – equity contribution,
security and all. [These practices] slowed down
the amount of people whose balance sheets can
allow them [to] access the loan.”
Abuja is determined to streamline the pro-
cess of distributing the loan funds and is consid-
ering its options for tweaking the programme,
Adeshina was quoted as saying by The Guard-
ian. “That is being looked at to see how asso-
ciated bottlenecks can be resolved to make it Nigeria’s government promotes the use of LPG as cooking gas (Photo: Sargas)

PROJECTS & COMPANIES
BP, Eni discuss options for Algerian assets

ALGERIA BP (UK) and Eni (Italy) have reportedly begun would have created one of the largest oil and gas
talks on a proposal that would see the latter companies working in Africa.
company take control of the former’s assets in However, three sources told Reuters earlier
Algeria. this week that BP was also considering selling its
The two majors had said in mid-May that Algerian assets to Eni. The parties are currently
they were discussing the possibility of merging involved in early-stage talks on a takeover deal,
their Algerian operations, in a transaction that they said.

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 22 02•June•2021