The Federal Government has again clarified its stance on the removal of fuel subsidy, saying it had no plan to do so in the immediate future.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, said this yesterday at the briefing by the Nigerian delegation on the outcome of their meetings with investors and institutions at the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington DC.
Ahmed spoke in reaction to IMF’s advice to federal government to remove fuel subsidy, which might have led to panic buying in the country.
“There is no imminent plan to remove subsidy. IMF said that fuel subsidy is better removed so that we can use the resources for other important sectors.
“In principle, It’s a good suggestion, but in Nigeria we don’t have any plans to remove fuel subsidy 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 will be working with various groups to find an alternative if we have to remove it. We are not yet at the point of removing fuel subsidy yet,” she said.
Ahmed described the outing in Washington DC as successful, which provided Nigeria with the opportunity to review developments in the global economy and proffer potential solutions.
She said that the general advice for Nigeria is to prioritise cost-effective policies that would increase resilience to shocks, boost productivity and raise incomes of the bottom 40 per cent of the population.
Also, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma, said he had discussions with investors and development partners on potential investment opportunities in the country.
According to him, he had discussions on improving the business climate, sensitised potential investors on incentives and opportunities for investments in Nigeria.
“In the course of my meeting with officials of the International Finance Corporation, I asked for their support for our efforts to leverage the private sector capital to fund critical infrastructure in Nigeria,” he said.
In the same vein, the Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, spoke about his meeting with Queen Maxima of the Netherlands who is the UN Secretary-General Special Advocate on financial inclusion.
He said they reviewed the position of Nigeria in terms of financial inclusion, observing that the rate of inclusion is moving up aggressively and we are very optimistic that in 2020 we will meet the 80 per cent inclusion target.
