By Emeka Anaeto, Economy Editor

Consumption of major petroleum products in the country in 2016 has indicated a significant adverse shift in purchasing power and a corresponding impact on trade volumes in the sector, according to data released yesterday by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS.

Fuel consumption in the third quarter of this year, Q3’16, dropped to 4.1 billion litres, a decrease of about 186.9 million litres or 4.4 per cent from 4.3 billion liters reported in the corresponding period of last year.

Highest average daily consumption was recorded at 47.1 million litres in Q3’16 against 48 million litres recorded in 2015.

Going by the NBS data, the consumption volume would record annual decline of about 1.0 billion litres by year end as 2015 total consumption was 17.8 billion litres, while so far, up till end September 2016, total volume was 12.6 billion litres, leaving a gap of over 5.2 billion litres for the remaining three months of this year.

Though most economy reports have attributed declining corporate revenue in 2016 to low purchasing power orchestrated by the downturn in the economy, petroleum marketers have attributed the decline to the increased pump price which had started showing in their books since May 2016 when retail price of the product was moved to N145 per litre from N86.50.

However, all the petroleum marketing companies quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange have turned in their Q3’16 financial results, showing significant rise in their gross revenue and profit, with corresponding appreciations in their share prices, but investment analysts attributed the good performance to retail price increase rather than volume sales increase.

The NBS data also indicated that the declining household disposable income has pressured down volume of kerosene consumption which dropped massively by 25.7 per cent to 195.8  million liters in Q3’16 as against 263.5 million recorded in the corresponding period of 2015.