The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed has disclosed that Federal government removed electricity subsidy quietly.
She also hinted at government’s plans to remove subsidy on petrol.
Ahmed said this at a virtual meeting of African Finance Ministers and the International Monetary Fund, on Thursday. The theme of the meeting was ‘The political economy of fiscal reforms’.
She said the amendment of the budget was ongoing to accommodate the incremental removal of petrol subsidy, adding that the government had to carefully adjust the prices incrementally at some levels.
Ahmed said, “We are cleaning up our subsidies. We had a setback; we were to remove fuel subsidy by July this year but there was a lot of pushback from the polity. We have elections coming and because of the hardship that companies and citizens went through during the COVID-19 pandemic, we just felt that the time was not right, so we pulled back on that.
“But we have been able to quietly implement subsidy removal in the electricity sector and as we speak, we don’t have subsidies in the electricity sector. We did that incrementally over time by carefully adjusting the prices at some levels while holding the lower levels down.”
Subsidy removal has been hotly debated across the country. Energy experts say it is hurting the economy.
