IMF counsels Nigeria on ways to protect the poor from impact of petrol price hike

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advised the Federal Government to prioritize building and accelerating a social safety net to protect the poor from the impact of the recent fuel price hike.

Ripples Nigeria reports that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, recently hiked the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly called petrol from N568/litre to N855/litre amid speculations of looming fresh increase.

Reacting to the impact of this on poor Nigerians, Resident Representative of the IMF in Nigeria, Dr. Christian Ebeke in an interview with Arise TV on Wednesday expressed worry that Nigerians were going through significant hardship due to policies being implemented by the present Federal Government.

Ebeke stated: “I think this upward adjustment of petrol price at the pump comes at a time Nigerians are already feeling significant hardship.

“There is a lot of pain for Nigerians coming from multiple shocks, compounded shocks, including high inflation, high food inflation. Now, the country is dealing with devastating floods, among others.

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“So the upward adjustment to pump price comes at that particular moment when the economy is also dealing with multiple shocks and Nigerians are feeling this pain.

“I would advise that as we clearly stated in our annual review of the Nigerian economy which we published in May and our advice is very clear.

“It is important to strengthen social protection in Nigeria. It is important to accelerate the mechanism and the disbursement of this support to the most vulnerable, so they can cope with this multiple shocks they are actually facing now.

“The programme the Federal Government has is reaching out to 15 million households, this is the way to go. This programme should be accelerated, cushioning the impact of the pump price policy on the most vulnerable is the immediate priority.

By: Babajide Okeowo

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