Finance minister says no plans to remove fuel subsidy yet

Minister of finance, Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed allayed wide fears on Sunday that the government was about to remove fuel subsidies, a situation which had caused long queues at the fuel stations.

The re-surfaced fuel queues had emanated from fears that government could begin to implement latest advise by the International Monetary Fund that the country needed to end fuel subsidies, which it said was benefiting just the rich and channel gains to social safety net programmes that benefit the country’s huge poor population.

She made the clarifications at a joint media briefing by the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele; Finance minister; and Udo Udoma, Minister of budget and National Planning on the outcomes of the just concluded spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington.

Her words, “We are here to discuss with the global community, on various policy issues. One of the issues that always come up, especially in the IMF Article IV is how we handle fuel subsidies.

“So in principle, the IMF would say fuel subsidies are better removed so that you can use the resources for other important sectors, which is a good advise.

“But in Nigeria, we don’t have  any plans to remove fuel subsidies at this time 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 fuel subsidy, we would be working with various groups to find would be the best approach if we have to.

“We discuss this very frequently at the Economic Management Team but what is the alternative?

“We haven’t yet found viable alternatives, so we are not yet at the level of removing fuel subsidy.”