The minister of finance, budget and national planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, said petrol subsidy will be removed before the expiration of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure on May 29, 2023.
The minister, who disclosed this during a courtesy visit to the Voice of Nigeria headquarters in Abuja, said the subsidy cost per litre of petrol ranges between N350 and N400 adding that Nigeria spends about N250 billion monthly on subsidy
“Right now the NNPC is the sole importer. It is imported and it is limited to an official price. So the subsidy per letter now ranges anything from N350, sometimes up to N400 per litre.
“The subsidy that government is carrying, just imagine what you can do with N250 billion per month because that’s the average cost per month to the nation,” she noted.
She said the implementation of the policy had been delayed because of the general election and the forthcoming national census.
“The fuel subsidy is one of those political economic decisions that you don’t want to have but you’re stuck with it anyway. But we’ve come to the point when almost everybody has agreed that this is really not serving the people that it is supposed to serve and the cost of it has become so high that it’s adding into our deficit.
“And right now, we have an approval…to exit subsidy by June 2023. Or at least I can say the Appropriation Act made provision that only allows subsidies up to June 2023,” she said.
The minister also stated yanking off the subsidy regime would be better for the market.
“So, we have to find ways in which we have to remove the subsidy and allow the market to flourish.
“When you remove the subsidy, then you have marketers that would be able to invest and bring this fuel product and sell it at market prices.
“Now, we have not even calculated or included in this N250 billion. There’s so much you can do. You can build more hospitals, more schools provide more social services, improve infrastructure that will enhance the quality of life of the people instead of just using it on a consumption item, you put gas in your car and in a couple of days is gone and then you have to put again.
“So we do hope that this time around, that the whole country will work with the government to get rid of this subsidy to save us from continuously expending limited resources on a consumption item,” she explained.
