By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The average price of refilling a 12.5kg cylinder for Liquefied Petroleum Gas (cooking gas) in Zamfara State in the month of February 2021 stood at N3,754.
This information was revealed by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Cooking Gas) Price Watch for last month.
In the report analysed by Business Post, the agency also said apart from Zamfara State, Kaduna and Katsina States recorded the lowest average price for the refilling of a 12.5kg cylinder at N3,858 and N3,988 respectively.
On the flip side, Sokoto State had the highest average price for the refilling of a 12.5kg cylinder for cooking gas at N4,884 and was followed by Cross River State at N4,853 and Bauchi State at N4,682.
The stats office disclosed in the report released last Saturday that the average price for the refilling of a 12.5kg cylinder for LPG increased by 4.45 per cent month-on-month and by 4.38 per cent year-on-year to N4,363 in February 2021 from N4,177 in January 2021. In February 2020, the average price for the same size was N4,180.
For a 5kg cylinder, the average price for the refilling for cooking gas increased by 3.59 per cent month-on-month and by 1.18 per cent year-on-year to N2,018 in February 2021 from N1,949 in January 2021. In February 2020, the average price was N1,995.
It was revealed that states with the highest average price for refilling the size of the cylinder under consideration were Bauchi at N2,487, Adamawa at N2,396 and Borno at N2,396.
However, the states with the lowest average price for a 5kg cylinder of LPG were Ebonyi at N1,756, Kogi at N1,775 and Jigawa at N1,795.
In terms of the six geo-political zones of Nigeria, the average price of refilling a 5kg LPG in February 2021 was N1,890 in the north-west, N2,309 in the north-east, N1,955 in north-central, N1,983 in the south-west, N2,022 in south-south and N1,977 in the south-east.
For a 12.5kg cylinder, the price was N4,143 in the north-west, N4,356 in the north east, N4,422 in the north-central, N4,320 in the south-west, N4,590 in south-south and N4,377 in the south-east.
Business Post gathered from the report that over 700 members of staff of the NBS in all the states of the federation conducted the fieldwork with supports from supervisors who were monitored by internal and external observers.
The agency said the prices were collected across all the 774 local governments across all states and the FCT from over 10,000 respondents and locations and reflects actual prices the households claimed they actually bought the cooking gas together with the prices reportedly sold by suppliers. The average of all these prices was then reported for each state and the average for the country is the average for the state.
Adedapo Adesanya