The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has confirmed that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) provided about $3.6 billion to oil marketers to import petroleum products. The Chief Operating Officer, Downstream of the NNPC, Mr. Henry Ikem-Obih, said on Wednesday at a panel session on the Nigerian Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition in Abuja.
He said the claims by the marketers that their inability to import petroleum product was due to problems related to access to foreign exchange was not true.
Although he did not mention the period the foreign exchange interventions were made, but he noted that the truth is that the forex intervention scheme which was rolled out by CBN and co-managed by the NNPC has been extremely successful.
“Since that scheme was set up, we have received applications from marketers for $7.2 billion worth of foreign exchange. In terms of actual disbursement, about 50 per cent of the applications got funding.
But the truth is that the foreign exchange that came through that scheme, especially for petrol, got potential funding for the majority of the applicants and foreign exchange was available to the marketers,” he said.
