The Chief Executive Officer, CEO, and Managing Director of Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, Robert Dickerman, has revealed that the Nigerian Government still pays one trillion naira every month for petrol subsidy.
The Managing Director/CEO of the company, Mr. Robert Dickerman, disclosed this while speaking during a panel session six, on Nigeria’s Downstream Forum at the just-concluded Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES) in Abuja.
He said there is still a massive subsidy, which explains why the product remains cheap, thus encouraging smuggling to neighbouring countries.
He said:
“Nigeria has a long history of allocating resources to oil and gas production at the expense of most other economic and social programs. To balance this, there has been a long-standing policy to mitigate consumer costs via palliatives such as fuel and food subsidies.
“But one of the net effects of oil money is underinvestment in local production, manufacturing and other value-added activities that could generate foreign
currency through exports.
There has also been a large underinvestment in the maintenance and upgrade of existing infrastructure including electricity, roads, health care, water, waste, education and financial infrastructure such as consumer credit.
“As a result, we have a huge negative trade deficit, except for crude oil and Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG, and our banks are not sufficiently capitalized to support significant new capital programs.
