The Cross River has adopted the Metal Fabrication Academy in Calabar as a centre for the conversion of vehicles powered by petrol or diesel to compressed natural gas.

The transportation commissioner, Ekpenyong Cobham, disclosed this in an interview on Monday in Calabar.

Mr Cobham said CNG was a low-hanging fruit, noting that the state was investing in the project to ameliorate the sufferings of residents caused by the increase in the cost of fuel in the nation.

According to him, part of the required infrastructure, such as a mother station, would take six months to be put in place, and the state was working towards that.

“The benefit of CNG will soon begin to drop so that we will be able to crash the cost of transportation in the state by 50 per cent. We are in touch with the presidential committee on CNG for the conversion of vehicles from fuel to CNG and we will be starting up with 500 free packages which they will be paying.

“The state government was also coming in with discussions with commercial Banks to help vehicle owners who may not be able to do a one-off payment for the conversion process to be able to do so in 36 months,” he said.

The commissioner said the conversion cost depended on the type of vehicle, but the cheapest was about N500,000 due to the nation’s exchange rate. He added that the government was seeking a partnership with commercial banks to spread payment.

He said while activating the CNG project, the Cross River government was also looking at an elaborate electric vehicle arrangement with one of the biggest players in the industry to put up an assembly plant in the state in the long term.

(NAN)