The Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed says the Federal Government
will look into gradual removal of fuel subsidy as part of strategy to
boost revenue.
Ahmed said this on Thursday on the sideline of the
IMF/World Bank meetings currently taking place in Washington DC, United
States of America.
Ahmed made the disclosure while reacting to
the IMF’s advice to Nigeria and other countries who still subsidise
fossil fuel to stop doing so.
According
to the IMF, fuel subsidy removal would help boost revenue and improve
government’s spending to build more hospitals, roads, schools, and to
support education and health for the people.
“It’s good advice, but we have to implement it in a way that will be successful as well as sustainable.
“We
are not in the position to wake up one night and just remove subsidy.
We have to educate the people, we have to show the Nigerian citizens
what the replacement for this subsidy will be.
“So, we have a lot of work to do because subsidy removal has to be gradual and the public has to be well informed,” she said.
Ahmed
said that since the IMF/World Bank meetings started, she has had
high-level meetings on taxation and discussions on global economy.
“We
spoke on the need to build more fiscal buffers because of the slow down
in global economic growth and partly by the natural incidences that are
happening around the world like the cyclone in Southern Africa.
“We
are discussing between ourselves on how we can better manage our
finances and also how we must curtail the increases in our debt.
“For
Nigeria, we are asking the World Bank to review some of the initiatives
that involves them looking at implementation systems when they are
providing funding for infrastructure.
“We understand that it’s well intended but we have informed them that they need to review its implementation, so that we are not overly slowed down because of the new procedures,” she said.
Source:- Pulseng
Share your thoughts