The Federal Government on Thursday said it was putting measures in place to ensure a further reduction in the cost of Liquefied Petroleum Gas, popularly called cooking gas.

It disclosed this while reacting to the recent marginal drop in the cost of cooking gas.

According to findings, the price of 12.5kg LPG has dropped from N8,800 to between N8400 and N8200. In some outlets, the price of the commodity dropped to between N7,800 and N8,000 as of Thursday.

In November, The PUNCH exclusively reported that the cost of LPG kept rising in 2021, jumping by more than 240 per cent between January and October 2021.

The development forced some LPG users to shift to charcoal or firewood, as consumers of the commodity raised the alarm over the persistent hike in its price.

The product had increased by 240 per cent for 12.5kg, moving up from N3,000 to N10,200 within the first 10 months of 2021.

“It is in government’s interest for the price to go down consistently and there are certain initiatives that are being taken at the moment, which hopefully will see to further drops in price regardless of the international cost,” the Programme Manager, National LPG Expansion Implementation Plan, Office of the Vice President, Dayo Adeshina, stated.

He added, “Now, as of the third of January this year, that figure is $744 per tonne. So you can see there is a drop from about $800 around November to $700 in January. The issue here is that the price has been fluctuating.

“Yes, you have the effects of Customs and the position of the VAT that made people pay tax for what they imported even in 2019 and 2020. Of course, some importers stopped importing, but there is a resolution going on to resolve that aspect.”