DON’T GO BACK: FUEL SUBSIDY WILL COST NIGERIA ₦20 TRILLION PER YEAR — CPPE
GREATRIBUNETVNEWS –IF Nigeria dares to return fuel subsidy, the country will pay a suicidal ₦20 TRILLION yearly bill, the Centre for Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has warned.
The centre’s CEO, Dr. Muda Yusuf, in a policy alert on Sunday, broke down the horror:
50 million litres a day x ₦1,050 subsidy per litre = ₦52.5bn daily, ₦1.575trn monthly, ₦19.16trn yearly.
That’s nearly ₦20 trillion — enough to wipe out budgets for infrastructure, education, health, security.
Yusuf warned: Bring back subsidy and you bring back smuggling, debt, naira crash, and fiscal collapse.
He said increased government borrowing could also crowd out private-sector credit, sustain high interest rates and weaken investment, productivity, job creation and economic growth, adding that the country would risk replacing an energy-price problem with a much larger fiscal, debt, foreign-exchange and investment problem.
He said that subsidy reinstatement would reverse the gains of deregulation and bring back market distortions.
“However, restoring a universal petrol subsidy would recreate many of the problems the reform sought to address, including fiscal leakage, foreign-exchange pressure, arbitrage, smuggling, pricing distortions and investment uncertainty,” Yusuf stated.
He emphasized that subsidy removal, though painful, was a structural reform needed to free up resources and attract investment into domestic refining.
He added: “Domestic refining also conserves foreign exchange through import substitution, creates export opportunities and retains refining, engineering, logistics and technical jobs within the Nigerian economy.
“Nigeria’s strategic objective should therefore be to transition from dependence on imported petroleum products to becoming a competitive regional refining and petrochemical hub.”
He stressed the need for targeted relief to reduce the cost of living without destabilizing public finances
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