The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has requested the sum of three trillion naira (N3,000,000,000,000) as fuel subsidy for 2022.
The Minister of Finance and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja on Wednesday.
The federal government had on Monday suspended its plan to remove fuel subsidy.
Mrs Ahmed said about N3 trillion would now be required to continue paying for the subsidy.
“We also presented to Council today a request for Council’s consideration to make additional funding provisions to enable us to meet incremental fuel subsidy request in the 2022 budget,” the minister said.
“You will recall that in the 2022 budget as appropriated, we have made a provision of N443 billion for a subsidy for January to June.
“Having taken into account the current realities, increased hardship in the population, heightened inflation, and also that the measures that needed to be taken to enable a smoother exit from the fuel subsidy are not yet in place, it was agreed by Council that it is desirable to exit fuel subsidy,” the minister said.
