Former Director-General, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Dr Muda Yusuf, has said the removal of fuel subsidy would boost the economy.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, had announced that the government would remove fuel subsidy and replace it with a monthly N5,000 transport stipend to about 40 million poor citizens.
In an interview monitored on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Tuesday, Yusf said the Federal Government cannot continue to spend N3 trillion annually on fuel subsidies.
He said: “ We cannot continue with a situation whereby we will be spending close to N3 trillion annually on subsidies and not just because of that, because of the investment; macro-economic implication.
“For this economy to continue to stand, this is something that has to happen. Look at the macro-economic effects, look at the effect on our reserves, look at the effect on our foreign exchange and more importantly, look at the effect on investments’’.
“How can we have a sector as important as the petroleum sector and we have a policy that is practically blocking investments into that sector because that is what this thing is doing.
“We are almost feeding the entire West African sub-region with our PMS. That is not sustainable unless we want to cripple the entire economy.”
Yusuf urged the current administration to deploy the money being spent on subsidies to primary healthcare, basic education and rural roads.
He said subsidy removal would have a lot of social implications.
Yusuf, however, noted that the government had plans for the masses by proposing a minimum of N5,000 per month to about 40 million vulnerable people.