Follow Us on Google
By Omodele Adigun
As labour unions warm up for a showdown with the Federal Government this week over its removal of the petroleum subsidy, , a former Statistician-General of the federation, Dr. Yemi Kale, has warned that inflation rate may spike to 30 per cent at end of this June .
The inflation rate currently stands at about 22 percent as at April end, the third consecutive rise in 2023 and the highest in the last 17 years.
Kale delivered this bombshell in a tweet at the weekend, while warning that the removal of subsidy would worsen the living conditions of Nigerians.
The consumer price index (CPI), which measures the rate of change in prices of goods and services, jumped to 22.22 per cent in April 2023 — the fourth consecutive surge in Nigeria’s inflation figure since the year started.
Analysing the implications of the new petrol price on the country’s inflation figure, Kale said the inflation rate may increase to 30 percent in June 2023.
However, the former statistician-general of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said the CPI for May would not be impacted “Using the NBS CPI model+my macro model, the new PMS prices may add about 6 percent to CPI in June over whatever is reported in May, holding other things constant,” he tweeted.
“April was 22.22 percent and May is unknown and won’t be affected. So, June will be somewhere about 30 percent. Not as bad as I expected.” In his inaugural speech on May 29, President Bola Tinubu, stated that petrol subsidy payments had stopped, even as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited raised the pump price of petrol across its retail outlets — a situation typical of a subsidy-free regime.
The national oil firm said the new pump price was in tandem with market realities.
Speaking on the situation, Mele Kyari, NNPC’s group chief executive officer (GCEO), on Thursday, said the removal of the petrol subsidy would promote competition and regulate consumption.
