Govt. insensitivity to fragile Niger Delta situation threatens economy- Avuru

The Federal Government has been advised to to be more proactive in addressing the fragile Niger Delta situation in order to engender the required peace and stability that would support the growth of oil and gas production which would in turn boost the country’s Gross Domestic Product..

This is as the government is also urged to privatise the refineries which have more or less become a major derain pipes to the country ’s treasury because they have largely remained dysfunctional for several years with no hope of government having the financial resources to revamp them.

Austin Avuru, managing director of Seplat Petroleum Development Company lamented the lack of enough sensitivity of the Nigeria government to happenings in the Nigeria Delta region which is making oil production capacity to be very fragile.

Avuru who spoke at the BusinessDay Economic Outlook 2018, also lamented the rate at which the government is borrowing from external sources to finance its projects adding that there are policies that could have been put in place to make her get such money locally but are not initiated . “We are borrowing heavily and understandably so, government policies that would have generated large sum of money without the need to borrow have been initiated,” he said..

Such policies he said could fetch the government about $20 billion. The sales of the refineries alone he said could generate about $2 billion.

“What is the point of keeping a refinery that has been working at between 7-30 percent in the past 10 years,” he said.

He queried the need for investing in pipelines when they would not be efficiently.

“Why would the govt invest so much money in gas pipelines, to be managed by the same agencies when in fact recapitalization and selling them will raise the country 1 billion dollars,” he said.

He said if the government has the political will and the courage to implement all these, she can easily make billion of dollars and there will be no need to borrow. He urged the g the government to get its policies right, saying that subsidising petrol and other market driven commodities is not the way to go.

“The electricity sector presently has a gap of 200 half billion dollars and this is a huge gap and the sector is almost nearing collapse just because the government do not have the courage to allow the market to drive the tariff. What economy will survive when you borrow to subsidise”

In his own comment Opeyemi Agbaje, urged the government to privatise the refineries saying that there would not be queues if refineries are privatised.

He said we should be worried about the state of the economy and urged the government to have a balance approach towards economic policies which create a more private driven economy.

 

Olusola Bello and David Ibemere