The federal government has disclosed that a new pump price of fuel would become effective on 1, January, 2016.

This disclosure was made yesterday by the minister of state for petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, at the Port Harcourt refinery shortly after taking a tour of the facility.

The minister stated that following the completion of an analysis taking into cognizance the current reality in the oil market, the new pump price would likely be either N85 or N86 from January 1, 2016.

Kachikwu, who stated that he signed off on the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) template Thursday, said marketers would be advised regarding the new price in a couple of days as the PPPRA would adjust its pricing template.

He said: "The new PPPRA template was signed off yesterday (Thursday), in the next couple of days marketers will be duly advised. Pricing is not a gimmick, we have to reflect these prices to reflect realities of crude market. The objective is two-fold, one we cannot afford to continue to subsidise when we can't even understand where those subsidies are going to. There's a lot of fraudulent element involved and we have to cut that off.