As the federal government finalizes plans to remove oil subsidy in 2022, it has roles out financial plans for certain Nigerians.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, revealed this in Abuja at the launch of the World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update (NDU) on Tuesday.
She said that the subsidies regime in the oil sector remains unsustainable and economically deceitful.
Ahead of the target date of mid-2022 for the complete elimination of fuel subsidies, she stated they are working with partners on measures to cushion potential negative impact of the removal of the subsidies on the most vulnerable at the bottom 40% of the population and revealed that one of such measures would be to institute a monthly transport subsidy in the form of cash transfer of N5,000 to between 30 – 40 million deserving Nigerians.
She expressed optimistic that the recent developments in the oil sector, such as the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021, hopefully, the full reactivation of the 4 public refineries in the country, and the completion and coming on stream of the 3 private refineries under construction in 2022, would significantly boost contribution from the sector to the nation’s economic growth efforts.
She maintenaned that with the report, that with the expansion of social protection policies during the pandemic, the government has an opportunity to phase out subsidies such as the PMS subsidy while utilizing cash transfers to safeguard the welfare of poor and middle-class households.
0
0
