Nigeria’s state oil company increased the pump price of gasoline by nearly 15%, weeks after prices almost tripled following the scrapping of fuel subsidies and a sharp depreciation of the naira, which made imports more costly.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Co. on Tuesday raised the cost to 617 naira ($0.78) a liter from 537 naira in Abuja, the nation’s capital, according to pump price adjustments at the company’s mega station seen by Bloomberg.

President Bola Tinubu in late May scrapped fuel subsidies that cost the government $10 billion in 2022 and opened the market to other gasoline importers, ending the NNPC’s monopoly. His administration also devalued the naira last month in an attempt to liberalize the currency market.

Soaring fuel prices could constrain the central bank’s efforts to contain inflation in Africa’s most populous nation, where about 40% of the population live in extreme poverty. The monetary policy committee has lifted its key interest rate by 700 basis points since May 2022 to a record 18.5%. Price-growth accelerated to a near 18-year high of 22.8% in June and is likely to surge further when the impact of the fuel subsidies removal and the weakening of the currency register, the statistics agency said Monday in a tweet.

To cushion Nigerians from the impact of the removal of gasoline subsidies, Tinubu asked lawmakers last week to approve N500 billion of spending.

New Licenses

Tinubu’s administration has also issued at least 56 licenses to petrol importers to supply the product, according to Farouk Ahmed, chief executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority.

“This is the first thing we are seeing after the deregulation that now marketers are actually participating in the market,” he said from Abuja by phone.