 The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Partial Company Limited, Mali Kare, has blamed market forces for the increase in petrol pump price from 540 Naira to 670 Naira per litre. Speaking with State House correspondent after a private meeting with Vice President Kashim Shatema at the presidential villa in Abuja, the NNPCL chief explained that the increase is based on the short supply of petrol. What I know is that the market forces will regulate the market. Prices will go down sometimes, sometimes it will go up, but there will be stability of supply and I'm also assuring Nigerians that this is the best way to go forward so that we can adjust prices when the market goes up. I don't have the details at this moment, but I know that our marketing wing acts just like every other company in this business. I know that a number of companies have imported petroleum products to the APMS. So many of them are online, I'm sure my colleague will confirm this. So, market forces have started to play people, have started having confidence in the market and the private sector people are now importing products, but there is no way they can recover their costs if they cannot take market to play tip costs. On his part, the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, Farooq Ahmed, said the price increased stems from rising crude prices. He also cited changes in fried prices alongside order and salary cost importers incurred during distributions. This is like just an encouragement to see that the market is liberated and everyone is free to import, so long you are working within the framework, especially in terms of quality. But the pricing as a regulator, we are not going to put a cap on the price because we are not part of those important, we are not a marketing company, we are just a regulator. So when you see market forces are working, basically what it is is that you buy, you can see the price of crude going up, a couple of weeks ago the price of crude was hovering around $70 per barrel, now it's hovering about $80 per barrel. So of course the crude price also drives the product price. You know because the importers are importing, they are basically on the cost of importation plus the freight plus other cost elements in terms of local distribution. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news, please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.