The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has requested the sun of N3 Trillion from the Federal Government for the payment of subsidy in 2022.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, made the disclosure while briefing State House Correspondent after the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Wednesday.
According to her, only N443 billion was provided for the funding of the fuel subsidy in the 2022 budget.
She explained further that the economic hardship in the land and the lack of structures to cushion the effects of a sudden subsidy removal made the NNPC to request N3 trillion from the Federal Government to fund subsidy in the budget.
She 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, which means an average of N100 billion, but in 2022, because of the 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 litres per day, now we’ll end up with the incremental cost of N3 trillion in 2022.”