The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed has expressed concern that the federal government’s continuous retention of the fuel subsidy regime was hurting the country’s ability to service its debts.
She made the remark at the hybrid launch of the World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update titled: “The Urgency for Business Unusual,’ held in Abuja.
Ahmed who called on Nigerians to understand that fuel subsidy was causing a massive fiscal burden, said a situation whereby the federal government borrows for consumption was wasteful.
“This premium motor spirit (PMS) subsidy is costing us an additional N4 trillion than was originally planned. So, this is an unplanned deficit. We have gone to the National Assembly; we have gotten approvals, but the approval was simply for us to cut down on some of the investment costs.
“So, investments that we needed to make in oil and gas sector which we are delaying and deferring to a later time and reducing the rollout of those investments. But we also had asked that we needed to borrow more which is very serious,” the minister said.
She pointed out that already, Nigeria’s borrowing was increasing significantly, and the country was struggling with being able to service debt “because even though revenue is increasing, the expenditure has been increasing at a much higher rate so it is a very difficult situation.”
Ahmed said: “So Nigerians need to understand that this PMS subsidy we are carrying now is hurting the nation, its impeding the government’s ability to be able to invest in human capital development. N4.5 trillion is money that we could have invested in health or education.
“But where we are investing it in consumption, which is very wasteful, because how many Nigerians own cars that are benefiting from this subsidy.”
She further pointed out that Nigeria was facing challenges from not gaining from the current oil price rally.
“We are in some kind of crossroads. It is not hearsay to say that Nigeria has not derived what it should from the current high crude oil prices, rather rising crude oil prices are posing significant fiscal challenges to our economy and may lead to some negative receipts and indeed we have started seeing already those negative receipts.”
The minister also outlined three reasons for Nigeria’s inability to fully benefit from the current boom in the international crisis.
“First of all, our prediction had fallen below Nigeria’s estimated capacity and the OPEC quota because of insecurity vandalism and theft. Secondly, the domestic price of payments has remained fixed, while global PMS prices have continued to rise.
“The third is that rising international crude prices also increases the burden of PMS because we buy refined petroleum products. The higher crude oil price goes in the global market, the more we’re paying for PMS, and by maintaining this PMS subsidy we as a country unfortunately forego investments that will have used the monies into essential infrastructure, goods or services that would have increased the overall productivity of the nation. So this is really the bane of the major issue that we’re facing now.”
