FG Denies Plans to Remove Fuel Subsidy
The federal government has denied that it was planning to remove oil subsidy following the advice from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Minister of Finance, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, said the federal government cannot remove fuel subsidy since there is no alternative to cushion the effect.
Ahmed spoke during a press conference at the end of the World Bank/IMF Spring Meeting 2019 in Washington DC Sunday.
She said, “there is no imminent plan to remove fuel subsidy. We are here to discuss with the global community on various policy issues. One of the issues that always come up in the reports, especially IMF Article IV Report is how we handle subsidies. So, in principle IMF will say fuel subsidy is better removed so that you use the resources for other important sectors, and in principle that is a fact but in Nigeria, we don’t have any plan to remove subsidy at the time.”
“This is because we have not yet designed buffers that will enable us remove the subsidy and provide cushions for our people.
“So, there is no plan to remove subsidy. We will be working with various groups to find what will be if we have to find what the alternative is. We will discuss this at the EMT. We have not yet found viable alternative, so, we are not yet at the point of removing subsidy.”
There has been increasing fuel scarcity as marketers have been hoarding fuel in anticipation that government will remove fuel subsidy.
Meanwhile, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) said Sunday that petroleum consumption daily in Nigeria has now increased by two million litres, from 54 million litres in 2018 to 56 million litres in this year.
In a statement, Executive Secretary, Abdulkadir Saidu said between 2017 and 2019, Nigeria’s daily petrol consumption increased by 10 million litres.
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