NBS Report: Cooking Gas Soars to Highest Price In 30 Months

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has released the cooking gas Price Watch report for February 2021, which shows that the cost of 5kg worth of liquefied gas in the country has increased by 3.59% from January’s figure of ₦1949.02 to ₦2018.91.

This was the highest 30-day increase since October 2017, when the cost of 5kg worth of cooking gas soared by an exceptionable 24.20 percent.

It also marked a year on year increase of 1.18 percent, the highest one year increase since August 2018’s staggering inflation of 10.26 percent.

Liquefied Petroleum in the country had not exceeded the ₦2,000 threshold in over 12 months, with the last of such occurrence happening in January 2020 when cooking gas hit ₦2019.08 before quickly retreating the next month.

For the 12.5kg range of size, it would now cost ₦4363.51 to fill the cylinder to its capacity, an increase of 4.45 percent from January’s figure, as well as a year-on-year increase of 4.38 percent.

The country had not witnessed a 12-month inflation this acute since August 2018 when gas hit ₦4366.48 per 12.5kg a year-on-year rise of 8 percent.

In the same vein, the last time 12.5kg cooking gas increased by such figures within a month was in October 2017, when it cost ₦4561.14, a 30-day increase of 15.83. This was the highest pricing of this size range since October 2018, when gas hit ₦4446.19 per 12.5kg, 30 months ago.

The state affected the most by this new prices for the 5kg and 12.5kg sizes were Anambra (₦2487.46) and Sokoto (4884.04) respectively. This meant that the North East at an average price of ₦2309.08 and South South at ₦4590.38, bore majority of the brunt in the respective size categories.

However, it was not all grim reading for the whole federation, as some countries had depots selling at relatively low prices.

In Ebonyi state, an average of ₦1756.25 was enough to fill your 5kg cylinder, but the North Western region of the country enjoyed the best overall pricing, as an average price of ₦1890.41 was documented in depots across the region.

Upgrading to the 12.5kg size, Zamfara had the best average cost, with a sum of just ₦3754.27 required to fill a cylinder to capacity.

However, this pricing did not resonate throughout the region, as the best average cost could be found in depots across the North West at a value of ₦4143.67.

How is the Data Collated?

Field work is done solely by over 700 NBS Staff in all States of the federation supported by supervisors who are monitored by internal and external observers.

Fuel Prices are collected across all the 774 local governments across all States and the FCT from over 10,000 respondents and locations and reflect actual prices households state they actually bought those fuels together with the prices reportedly sold by the fuel suppliers.

The average of all these prices is then reported for each state and the average for the country is the average for the state.

NBS audit team subsequently conducts randomly selected verification of prices recorded.