I have not made any decision on subsidy removal – Buhari

Firstclass newsline gathered that President Muhammadu Buhari has said
he has not taken a decision on the removal of subsidies on refined
petroleum products as being suggested in many quarters.
Instead, the President said he had decided to handle the matter with
care because most of the presentations he had received on the need to
remove the subsidies had no depth.
According to a statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and
Publicity to the President, Mallam Garba Shehu, Buhari made his
position known after receiving a briefing from the Ministry of
Petroleum Resources, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and
other agencies in the oil sector at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on
Monday.
Shehu said the President told members of the delegation that he would
carefully review all the submissions he had received on the need to
remove the subsidies.
Buhari was quoted as saying, "I have received many literature on the
need to remove subsidies, but much of it has no depth. When you touch
the price of petroleum products; that has the effect of triggering
price rise on transportation, food and rents.
"That is for those who earn salaries, but there are many who are
jobless and will be affected by it."
The President said subsidies were not necessarily the most serious
problems in the nation's oil and gas sector.
Rather, he identified lack of security, sabotage, vandalism,
corruption and mismanagement as the bane of the industry.
"We have to go back to the good old days of transparency and
accountability," the President said.
He, therefore, directed the NNPC to review existing agreements for the
swapping of crude oil for refined products.
The review, he said, was necessary in order to inject more honesty and
transparency into the process so as to reduce costs.
Buhari also asked the NNPC management to do more to improve the supply
of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (cooking gas).
Similarly, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Yakubu
Dogara, said on Monday that the only legal way the Federal Government
could permanently remove the subsidy on petroleum products was to
initiate an amendment to the Price Control Act or have it repealed
entirely by the National Assembly.
He noted that in the schedules to the Act, petroleum products were
listed among the items to be regulated through pricing.
Dogara also stated that an alternative was for the government to
inaugurate the price control board provided for in the Act so that in
performing its functions, the board could remove petroleum products
from the list.
"This is the most legal way to do it so that subsidy can go
permanently; it is not by policy pronouncements alone, it is for the
government to quickly put the board in place and in a way this issue
can be done with once and for all", the Speaker added.
Dogara spoke in Abuja when he received a delegation of members of the
Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria at the National
Assembly.
The delegation was led by the President of the association, Mr.
Chinedu Okoronkwo.
Firstclassnewsline.net