No to fuel price hike — FG * vow to stick to pact with Labour - Vanguard

Written by Ben Agande, Abuja

Sunday, 02 December 2007

Federal Government has allayed the fear that another round of fuel price hike was in the offing, saying that its agreement last June with the organised Labour that the prices of petroleum products would not go up for one year therefrom was still subsisting. Minister of state for energy, Odein Ajumogobia, said, yesterday, that his remarks when he represented Vice President Goodluck Jonathan at a forum organised by a committee of the Senate that the current N70 per litre price of petrol was not sustainable had been taken to mean that the government was proposing to hike the prices of petroleum products. Addressing journalists in Abuja, the minister explained that he merely said at the forum that, bearing in mind the sustained increase in the prices of petroleum products internationally, the current local prices of the products could not be sustained, and not that government was proposing a hike in the prices of the products. According to him, given President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s pedigree, there was no intention to renege on the agreement reached with Labour. Ajumogobia pointed out that the issue of increase in the prices of petroleum products had not even been discussed in government not to talk of any decision to hike the prices. Full Story