The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has asked for a total of N3 trillion from the Federal Government (FG) to fund fuel subsidy in 2022. This was disclosed on Wednesday by the Minister of Finance and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja.
Ahmed said, “We also presented to Council today a request for Council’s consideration to make additional funding provisions to enable us to meet incremental fuel subsidy request in the 2022 Budget. You’ll recall that in the 2022 Budget, as appropriated, we have made a provision of N443 billion for a subsidy for January to June.
“Having taken into account the current realities; increased hardship in the population, heightened inflation, and also that the measures that needed to be taken to enable a smoother exit from the fuel subsidy are not yet in place, it was agreed by Council that it is desirable to exit fuel subsidy.
“The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has presented to the ministry a request for N3 trillion as fuel subsidy for 2022. What this means is that we have to make an incremental provision of N2.557 trillion to be able to meet the subsidy requirement, which is averaging about N270 billion per month.
“In 2021, the actual under-recovery that has been charged to the federation was N1.2 trillion, but in 2022, because of increased crude oil price per barrel in the global market, now at $80 per barrel and also because an NNPC’s assessment is that the country is consuming 65.7 million liters per day, now we’ll end up with the incremental cost of N3 trillion in 2022.”
She said the request was being considered by the Council, which directed the Ministry of Finance and National Planning to approach the National Assembly in order to amend the fiscal framework as well as the budget.
