Govt to pay fuel subsidy marketers today

The Federal Government on Wednesday said marketers with genuine claims on the fuel subsidy regime would be paid today (Thursday).

The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala while confirming this said that the government would continue to block loopholes in the system.

She said the government had worked so hard to clean up the mess in the payment of fuel subsidy and had brought down the claims from N2.2tn in 2011 to N971bn.

She also said of the N850bn so far released for capital projects in the 2013 budget, about 76 per cent had been utilised by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the government.

She spoke in Abuja while briefing journalists on recent developments in the Nigerian economy.

The minister said, 'We have released N850bn now; we released N400bn in the first quarter, N200bn in the second quarter, and we have released N250bn for the third quarter.

'And we have cash-backed virtually all we have released. For example, of this fresh N250bn, we have loaded N210bn onto the system already.

'From the N600bn released for the first and second quarters, the MDAs have used 76 per cent on the average, and we just released N250bn of which N210bn has been cash-backed, and we hope to cash-back the remainder at the end of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee meeting.', she added.