DATED: 6th January, 2012

MY EMAIL RESPONSE TO A POPULAR FG SUPPORTER ON SUBSIDY REMOVAL

Good morning Sir,

I totally agree with the write-up of Dr. Abati and his position is a true reflection of the reality, though not supported with facts and figures as at the time he wrote it in 2009. Those were the thoughts of an unbiased mind and I can understand why he has to swallow his words at this stage – a typical Nigerian trading off his integrity for pecuniary gains. Oshiomole’s stance on the matter is equally understandable.

Kindly permit me to draw your attention to the IMF report of 2010 (Staff position note) Titled "Petroleum Product Subsidies: Costly, Inequitable, and Rising";  which, from my understanding, is the current driver of the IMF thoughts on the issue of petroleum subsidy removal. The Executive Summary reads thus:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Petroleum product subsidies have again started to rise with the rebound in international prices. This note reviews recent developments in subsidy levels and argues that it is necessary to reform the policy framework for setting petroleum product prices in order to reduce the fiscal burden of these subsidies and to address climate change. In 2003, global consumer subsidies for petroleum products totaled nearly $60 billion. They are projected to reach almost $250 billion in 2010. Tax-inclusive subsidies, reflecting suboptimal taxation, are estimated to be much larger—$740 billion in 2010, or 1 percent of global GDP. G-20 countries account for over 70 percent of tax-inclusive subsidies, with emerging G-20 countries accounting for a sizable share. Halving tax-inclusive subsidies could reduce projected fiscal deficits by one-sixth in subsidizing countries and could reduce greenhouse emissions by around 15 percent over the long run. Subsidy reform strategies should contain measures to mitigate the impact of higher prices on the poorest groups.

It is important to note the following:

1. That the most developed countries of the world, the G-20 and others inclusive, are the largest subsidizers of Petroleum Products to their citizens. This is in order to stimulate growth and protect their economy against external shocks in crude prices. As it is now, they are not ready to remove those subsidies since there is an imminent danger of economic depression if such policy is adopted at this stage of the global economic downturn.
2. That the spirit of this IMF’s report is majorly a concern for economies that do not benefit from increases in incomes accruing as a result of the increase in global oil prices. Nigeria is one of the major exceptions in this case since we are cushioned from such increases in prices of petroleum products as a result of the excess income we make from crude oil export.
3. On page 13-14 of the IMF report, the writers suggested some mitigating measures in the event of a petroleum subsidy removal which include palliative measures such as “cash transfers to vulnerable groups, subsidies for consumption of water and electricity below a specified threshold.” Our intelligent finance/economic administrators do not see these as very important before implementing the myopic IMF policy of subsidy removal, rather, they wanted us to give them a standing ovation for “planning” to buy 1,600 buses for 160million Nigerians.
4. So far, the IMF can only account for few countries ( including Mozambique, Indonesia, Ghana, Jordan and recently our beloved country, Nigeria) who have adopted the subsidy removal policy and they all have something in common - “third world countries”. Isn’t that funny?

My questions are:

1. Who then cares for the poor?
2. Why should I still pay several thousand of Naira in PAYE tax to a government that is fast becoming irrelevant to my life and well being?
3. Does the opinion of majority of the citizens not count anymore? Remember the vote of the same majority does count.
4. What are the welfare programmes of a “responsible” government? And why are we not seeing these things in action? Are the “Cabals” also hijacking these?

My suggestion:

Let the FG hire PWC or KPMG to redesign the structures and processes in NNPC and other government agencies in order to eliminate/reduce the corrupt practices we’ve been talking about. That’s if they are truly honest to themselves. We’ve had a clean-up in the banking sector, this exercise can also be replicated in the public sector.


As for me, I am on the side of the masses and I look forward to a Nigeria where our economic planners won’t be a guinea pig of the IMF and World Bank scholars.

The IMF report is attached hereto. ( http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/spn/2010/spn1005.pdf )

Regards,


http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/spn/2010/spn1005.pdf

thank you for that, note the palliatives IMf recommended iweala thinks we deserve buses for the hike in the cost of living. I dont understand which side of the text book this people read, below is my opinion about Sanusi.


One big problem of Nigerians is our inability to scrutinize people’s pedigree.
Look at president Jonathan for instance, this is a man with zero success story as both deputy and Gov. of bayelsa state, zero success story as both vice and acting president yet Nigerians delude themselves he is the messiah even when it was clear that unscrupulous people were donating to his campaign, we still believed he will take us to the promised land on luck.
Let us talk about this mystic economic team Jonathan put together, who are these people?
I for one have no bias against any public official in which ever capacity but I have zero tolerance for incompetence.
Has sanusi’s economic model ever worked in this country? Which economic school of thought does he belong to and what is his mission in this country?
I asked this because I am an ardent follower of events in our economic sphere and have never been shy to put Sanusi’s parlance and pragmatism of economic solutions to a test, but as I speak, sanusi’s economic agenda eludes me.
This is a man who inherited a banking sector which according to Business day 2006 edition averred that “for every five Nigerians with a good job, three are bankers”.
Today, we have a Sanusi who in his usual voodoo economic jingoism has created more unemployment and inefficiency in the banking sector than the military junta.
Who is this man Sanusi?
In the words of his predecessor who consolidated these banks, “the banks were more financially robust” and doing bigger business but along the line something happened.
There was partial deregulation and the cost of diesel went all time high and very scarce, some of those companies who took loans from the banks were running high over head cost and couldn’t survive the tsunami of events that followed,
Job cuts, and eventual closure was the case. During the last days of chukwuma soludo, the businesses were already down so no way to repay the bank loans.
The banks were stranded but soludo applied wisdom, in his words ‘’ decision making in the banking system must carry the instrument of perception along’’ and that was exactly what he did, he quickly created an EDW whereby the near distressed banks could quietly access Govt. loans to revive their institutions hoping to keep people’s confidence in tact while the banks gradually recover.
Here comes our Sanusi with his usual economic parlance and political jingoism.
Destroyed the first instrument of perception which soludo fought so hard to preserve by coming on National television to announce that those banks are not healthy. Till date, we lost one of the most viable sectors of this economy; we lost meaningful employments and international confidence in our banking institutions in its entity, thanks to Sanusi’s voodoo economic theories and mystic economic solutions.
I ask again; who is this Man Sanusi and his mission in this country?
I leave you to be the judge of preceding events from Sanusi’s actions. After consulting his economic oracle, he boldly told Nigerians that the way forward is to bail out the banks (which he destroyed) and SME’s (small and medium scale enterprise) hoping that they will bounce back in business to repay the bank loans.
Till date, Sanusi has not given Nigerians the progress report of those bailed out banks and SME’s especially those in the textile business.
Today, by throwing his weight behind full deregulation in the downstream sector simply tells me that Sanusi’s witch doctor did not tell him exactly which economic formula destroyed his banks. Perhaps he thought that his SME ‘’palliative’’ was good enough for miserable Nigerians who don’t mind trading a permanent position job for a contract job which was what his SME’s were offering or rather, our employments for underemployment.
This is a man that ignores the basic on ground economic theories that work in the country for some mystic economic solutions.
That begs the question; should you deregulate fully the downstream sector, what becomes of those SME’s and how do they repay the loans you gave to them considering that energy cost and inflation will triple their over head cost? Or has his voodoo economic solution already categorized them as mere collateral damage in his economic reform agenda?
Let us analyze some of sanusi’s Hennessey inspired economic formulae.
First he said that by withdrawing subsidy they have destroyed corruption and broken the financial bones of the ‘’cabal’’ benefitting from this subsidy regime, is this really true?
If the landing cost of PMS is about 110naira and government’s inefficiency bloats it to 141naira (ofcourse, storage,transportation,deumurrage etc as enshrined into the subsidy are all Govts ineptitude).
“Citeris paribus” under the subsidy program, a marketer earns 110-65 (ie if ideally Govt clean their mess)
And without subsidy, a marketer makes 220,180,165-110 who exactly did this economic magician break their finances? Because what I see in my economics kwashiorkor is Govt transferring the burden of import deficit to the people not the marketers losing money like sanusi claims.
Secondly, his liquor economics made him believe that he will save money in the face of spiral inflation, and went ahead to justify the inflation saying it is by a little fraction not more than 10% increase, lol. What indices did this acclaimed “pundit” use in measuring this?
In an economy without a functional price regulatory agency and a comatose standard organization with shabby police officers? In an economy where everybody is his own LGA and can fix rates with impunity? What drives this man’s economic sagacity? Witch craft?
Thirdly,
Sanusi is consistently lying to Nigerians that an increase in pump price will attract investors to build refineries; this is the verge where I think sanusi should go back to school.
SLS is not enlightened enough to understand why there was an exodus of indigenous American companies between 1998 to 2008 to Asia and Africa, reason; COST OF DOING BUISNESS or better put, UNFAVOURABLE BUISNESS CLIMATE.
With unfavorable tax laws, incessant labor wage reviews and land acquisition challenges, most companies couldn’t survive and they left US en masse conversely, land grab in Africa and cheap labor in Asia became viable alternatives.
Today, a drunk CBN governor in his usual rhetoric, capitalizing on the chasm of academic deficiency of average Nigerians is proposing that increase in pump price which will directly translate to high energy cost (in a generator driven economy), spiral inflation and high cost of labor will attract foreign investors to build refineries. Is it not ridiculous?
What kind of voodoo economic theory is that?
sanusi quickly forgot to tell Nigerians that their existing refineries even at a disappointing output is subsidized.
Mr Sanusi should have asked himself, when we deregulated diesel, did we attract heavy duty companies, diesel refineries and why?
According to his business model, I was expecting that after the deregulation of diesel, we would have had companies like CAT,Ingersollrand,Volvo,Ebara,bosh,Groove,Capco etc even refineries enhanced to produce more of Diesel with limited petroleum by products relocating their plants to Nigeria to benefit from our diesel profitable market. But in reality, that wasn’t the case and i will explain why;
Take shell for example, the presence of SPDC in portharcourt has given rise to a plethora of servicing companies rendering one or two services to shell and that is how it works. These servicing companies are equally employers of labor.
Does sanusi think that the refining companies will be servicing themselves? Is that possible? When you destroy the business environment for these smaller servicing companies to thrive, how exactly do you want the refining companies to thrive? For the few that will survive, at what cost will they render their services? Shouldn’t the investors consider these in their feasibility studies?
How will they cope? If at all it works, most components and services are definitely going to be outsourced to neighboring countries creating jobs for Ghanaians and Nigerians than Nigeria.
Some servicing companies will rather relocate to nearby countries and leave skeletal operations here in Nigeria just to stay in business; sanusi will end up exporting services elsewhere.
I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed at the caliber of people that take decisions for this nation.
I say it for the umpteenth time; we don’t need to create problems to solve problems, what we need is to ensure that Nigeria has cheaper oil on ground, that will attract investors as against sanusi’s high pump price economic theory which will breed inflation and closure of smaller companies.
The IOC’s (international oil companies) operating in Nigeria has told us that it takes less than 12 usd to extract 1bbl of our crude oil.
Why is sanusi not thinking of creating a solution from that angle? if NPDC can guarantee us just 150,000bbl/d of this cheap crude at less than 12usd, the market will be attractive, add refining cost and other cost to push it to about 22usd/bbl a pms of 30naira per litre will be achievable from these refineries and inflation will reduce by over 40%.leaving us with a plethora of servicing companies which will translate to more jobs.
Is this too much for Madueke and Sanusi to sit and figure out? Other than their inflation marred solution.
Lastly
Sanusi lied that the subsidy reinjection fund will be used to build refineries; I can’t help but pity his unrealistic mystic economic solutions.
How much is the FG’s cut in the SURE fund? Less than 600billion, what kind of refinery will that build? I hope sanusi is not confusing refineries for fuel dispensing stations or are we heading for another IMF/world bank debt burden? I don’t just get it.
Where will this SURE funding appear from? I didn’t see it in the 2012 budget proposal, is it right to increase the suffering of the Nigerian people and go back and implement your constitutional annual budget?
Where is sanusi going to get the crude oil to supply these refineries? From the little we make from our JV? I hope this man is not taking us for a ride?
This same crude we use to implement our budget? Which sells at international price? This man is cynical.
How did we end up with two monsters sanusi lamido sanusi and Allison Madueke at the same time?
I can see a pattern in Sanusi’s line of thought;
if a bank is performing poorly, CLOSE IT DOWN
If the subsidy regime is performing poorly; SCRAP IT.
Can Nigerians please help me ask Sanusi if it is a crime to proffer real economic solutions to economic challenges other than throwing away the child with the bath water?
Should we fold our hands and watch our Economic magician Sanusi scrap the economic foundation of our survival?
Sanusi and Allison madueke are doing a great disservice to this nation though I don’t expect Mr. President to fire them because he is too incompetent to read the hand writings on the wall.

thank you for that, note the palliatives IMf recommended iweala thinks we deserve buses for the hike in the cost of living. I dont understand which side of the text book this people read, below is my opinion about Sanusi.


One big problem of Nigerians is our inability to scrutinize people’s pedigree.
Look at president Jonathan for instance, this is a man with zero success story as both deputy and Gov. of bayelsa state, zero success story as both vice and acting president yet Nigerians delude themselves he is the messiah even when it was clear that unscrupulous people were donating to his campaign, we still believed he will take us to the promised land on luck.
Let us talk about this mystic economic team Jonathan put together, who are these people?
I for one have no bias against any public official in which ever capacity but I have zero tolerance for incompetence.
Has sanusi’s economic model ever worked in this country? Which economic school of thought does he belong to and what is his mission in this country?
I asked this because I am an ardent follower of events in our economic sphere and have never been shy to put Sanusi’s parlance and pragmatism of economic solutions to a test, but as I speak, sanusi’s economic agenda eludes me.
This is a man who inherited a banking sector which according to Business day 2006 edition averred that “for every five Nigerians with a good job, three are bankers”.
Today, we have a Sanusi who in his usual voodoo economic jingoism has created more unemployment and inefficiency in the banking sector than the military junta.
Who is this man Sanusi?
In the words of his predecessor who consolidated these banks, “the banks were more financially robust” and doing bigger business but along the line something happened.
There was partial deregulation and the cost of diesel went all time high and very scarce, some of those companies who took loans from the banks were running high over head cost and couldn’t survive the tsunami of events that followed,
Job cuts, and eventual closure was the case. During the last days of chukwuma soludo, the businesses were already down so no way to repay the bank loans.
The banks were stranded but soludo applied wisdom, in his words ‘’ decision making in the banking system must carry the instrument of perception along’’ and that was exactly what he did, he quickly created an EDW whereby the near distressed banks could quietly access Govt. loans to revive their institutions hoping to keep people’s confidence in tact while the banks gradually recover.
Here comes our Sanusi with his usual economic parlance and political jingoism.
Destroyed the first instrument of perception which soludo fought so hard to preserve by coming on National television to announce that those banks are not healthy. Till date, we lost one of the most viable sectors of this economy; we lost meaningful employments and international confidence in our banking institutions in its entity, thanks to Sanusi’s voodoo economic theories and mystic economic solutions.
I ask again; who is this Man Sanusi and his mission in this country?
I leave you to be the judge of preceding events from Sanusi’s actions. After consulting his economic oracle, he boldly told Nigerians that the way forward is to bail out the banks (which he destroyed) and SME’s (small and medium scale enterprise) hoping that they will bounce back in business to repay the bank loans.
Till date, Sanusi has not given Nigerians the progress report of those bailed out banks and SME’s especially those in the textile business.
Today, by throwing his weight behind full deregulation in the downstream sector simply tells me that Sanusi’s witch doctor did not tell him exactly which economic formula destroyed his banks. Perhaps he thought that his SME ‘’palliative’’ was good enough for miserable Nigerians who don’t mind trading a permanent position job for a contract job which was what his SME’s were offering or rather, our employments for underemployment.
This is a man that ignores the basic on ground economic theories that work in the country for some mystic economic solutions.
That begs the question; should you deregulate fully the downstream sector, what becomes of those SME’s and how do they repay the loans you gave to them considering that energy cost and inflation will triple their over head cost? Or has his voodoo economic solution already categorized them as mere collateral damage in his economic reform agenda?
Let us analyze some of sanusi’s Hennessey inspired economic formulae.
First he said that by withdrawing subsidy they have destroyed corruption and broken the financial bones of the ‘’cabal’’ benefitting from this subsidy regime, is this really true?
If the landing cost of PMS is about 110naira and government’s inefficiency bloats it to 141naira (ofcourse, storage,transportation,deumurrage etc as enshrined into the subsidy are all Govts ineptitude).
“Citeris paribus” under the subsidy program, a marketer earns 110-65 (ie if ideally Govt clean their mess)
And without subsidy, a marketer makes 220,180,165-110 who exactly did this economic magician break their finances? Because what I see in my economics kwashiorkor is Govt transferring the burden of import deficit to the people not the marketers losing money like sanusi claims.
Secondly, his liquor economics made him believe that he will save money in the face of spiral inflation, and went ahead to justify the inflation saying it is by a little fraction not more than 10% increase, lol. What indices did this acclaimed “pundit” use in measuring this?
In an economy without a functional price regulatory agency and a comatose standard organization with shabby police officers? In an economy where everybody is his own LGA and can fix rates with impunity? What drives this man’s economic sagacity? Witch craft?
Thirdly,
Sanusi is consistently lying to Nigerians that an increase in pump price will attract investors to build refineries; this is the verge where I think sanusi should go back to school.
SLS is not enlightened enough to understand why there was an exodus of indigenous American companies between 1998 to 2008 to Asia and Africa, reason; COST OF DOING BUISNESS or better put, UNFAVOURABLE BUISNESS CLIMATE.
With unfavorable tax laws, incessant labor wage reviews and land acquisition challenges, most companies couldn’t survive and they left US en masse conversely, land grab in Africa and cheap labor in Asia became viable alternatives.
Today, a drunk CBN governor in his usual rhetoric, capitalizing on the chasm of academic deficiency of average Nigerians is proposing that increase in pump price which will directly translate to high energy cost (in a generator driven economy), spiral inflation and high cost of labor will attract foreign investors to build refineries. Is it not ridiculous?
What kind of voodoo economic theory is that?
sanusi quickly forgot to tell Nigerians that their existing refineries even at a disappointing output is subsidized.
Mr Sanusi should have asked himself, when we deregulated diesel, did we attract heavy duty companies, diesel refineries and why?
According to his business model, I was expecting that after the deregulation of diesel, we would have had companies like CAT,Ingersollrand,Volvo,Ebara,bosh,Groove,Capco etc even refineries enhanced to produce more of Diesel with limited petroleum by products relocating their plants to Nigeria to benefit from our diesel profitable market. But in reality, that wasn’t the case and i will explain why;
Take shell for example, the presence of SPDC in portharcourt has given rise to a plethora of servicing companies rendering one or two services to shell and that is how it works. These servicing companies are equally employers of labor.
Does sanusi think that the refining companies will be servicing themselves? Is that possible? When you destroy the business environment for these smaller servicing companies to thrive, how exactly do you want the refining companies to thrive? For the few that will survive, at what cost will they render their services? Shouldn’t the investors consider these in their feasibility studies?
How will they cope? If at all it works, most components and services are definitely going to be outsourced to neighboring countries creating jobs for Ghanaians and Nigerians than Nigeria.
Some servicing companies will rather relocate to nearby countries and leave skeletal operations here in Nigeria just to stay in business; sanusi will end up exporting services elsewhere.
I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed at the caliber of people that take decisions for this nation.
I say it for the umpteenth time; we don’t need to create problems to solve problems, what we need is to ensure that Nigeria has cheaper oil on ground, that will attract investors as against sanusi’s high pump price economic theory which will breed inflation and closure of smaller companies.
The IOC’s (international oil companies) operating in Nigeria has told us that it takes less than 12 usd to extract 1bbl of our crude oil.
Why is sanusi not thinking of creating a solution from that angle? if NPDC can guarantee us just 150,000bbl/d of this cheap crude at less than 12usd, the market will be attractive, add refining cost and other cost to push it to about 22usd/bbl a pms of 30naira per litre will be achievable from these refineries and inflation will reduce by over 40%.leaving us with a plethora of servicing companies which will translate to more jobs.
Is this too much for Madueke and Sanusi to sit and figure out? Other than their inflation marred solution.
Lastly
Sanusi lied that the subsidy reinjection fund will be used to build refineries; I can’t help but pity his unrealistic mystic economic solutions.
How much is the FG’s cut in the SURE fund? Less than 600billion, what kind of refinery will that build? I hope sanusi is not confusing refineries for fuel dispensing stations or are we heading for another IMF/world bank debt burden? I don’t just get it.
Where will this SURE funding appear from? I didn’t see it in the 2012 budget proposal, is it right to increase the suffering of the Nigerian people and go back and implement your constitutional annual budget?
Where is sanusi going to get the crude oil to supply these refineries? From the little we make from our JV? I hope this man is not taking us for a ride?
This same crude we use to implement our budget? Which sells at international price? This man is cynical.
How did we end up with two monsters sanusi lamido sanusi and Allison Madueke at the same time?
I can see a pattern in Sanusi’s line of thought;
if a bank is performing poorly, CLOSE IT DOWN
If the subsidy regime is performing poorly; SCRAP IT.
Can Nigerians please help me ask Sanusi if it is a crime to proffer real economic solutions to economic challenges other than throwing away the child with the bath water?
Should we fold our hands and watch our Economic magician Sanusi scrap the economic foundation of our survival?
Sanusi and Allison madueke are doing a great disservice to this nation though I don’t expect Mr. President to fire them because he is too incompetent to read the hand writings on the wall.

@Poster, I commend you for taking time to do this. This is one of the problems I have with our so-called intelligentsia in this country. They are quick to swallow up what they are FED without taking needed time to investigate the truth of what they are told.

The way I see, the IMF policy is itself not the problem, but the way our Government has chosen to haphazardly implement said policies is. This non-nonchalant culture has been the main reason why policy after policy( most of them common sense policies) turn to mush as soon as Nigerian Government CLAIMS it has been implemented.

@kobojunkie

dats simply d truth. d govt is so reckless. dey just behave like agberos once dey hear some thimg new gbam! dey rush to implement
when they have to first sit down review and adapt to our perculiar environment.
look at the nonesense they have turned d issue of deregulation of downstream sector into.

good as it may be the govt has just bungled the whole thing out of sheer recklessness

well this is what u get when u have touts and area boys in leadership

klarry79:

@kobojunkie

dats simply d truth. d govt is so reckless. dey just behave like agberos once dey hear some thimg new gbam! dey rush to implement
when they have to first sit down review and adapt to our perculiar environment.
look at the nonesense they have turned d issue of deregulation of downstream sector into.

good as it may be the govt has just bungled the whole thing out of sheer recklessness

well this is what u get when u have touts and area boys in leadership

It is the truth. I had to take an economic class where I was required to read up on international policies in the third world, and I went in wanting to write a really cool report on how the IMF was UNFAIR to poor countries. I chose to investigate IMF SAP policies with the intention of showing how those actual demands crippled Nigerian economy. Long story short, half way through the semester, I had to switch to writing on UNICEF and contributions it had made to healthcare development in Nigeria. Upon researching the SAP policies, I realized these were mostly common sense policies, only they were supposedly 'implemented' by baboons who claimed to be leaders.