FG to resume subsidy payment in July

The Federal Government on Tuesday said it would resume the payment of fuel subsidy next month.

The Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama, confirmed this in Ibadan shortly after the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee meeting ended.

In a bid to ensure prudent management of the fuel subsidy budget, the government had two months ago stopped further payments to the oil marketers.

While N232bn was budgeted for the payment of subsidy arrears in the 2012 budget, a whopping N451bn had so far been paid as arrears to oil marketers for 2011 alone.

The development had made the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to constitute a committee led by the Group Managing Director, Access Bank Plc, Mr. AigbojeAig-Imoukhuede, to verify subsidy arrears paid to oil marketers.

But Ngama said the committee had concluded its assignments and would submit its report to the Federal Government before the end of this week.

He said apart from the N451bn paid to oil marketers, additional N50bn was recently released, thus bringing the subsidy bill for this year to N501bn.

This implies that out of the N888bn set aside for subsidy, only N387bn is left for spending under the 2012 budget.

He said, “In the month of May, just like April, we didn’t pay any amount for subsidy. This is because we stopped the payment of fuel subsidy because we felt there was a need to carry out a reconciliation of the payments.

PUNCH