 Welcome back now, financial inclusion in Nigeria has had undeniable successes, with the onboarding of residents to the banking sector consistently progressing, but overall exclusion rates continue to exceed official targets, not listed due to low financial literacy. Going forward, Nigeria's financial inclusion strategy should more systematically leverage rapidly developing digital instruments. Let's take this feature from the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria Ambron. The impact of mobile money and agency banking, the heat, a crescendo in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown, with active point-of-sale terminals used by merchants for financial transactions, recording about $3.1 trillion in the second quarter of 2021. The increase in the value of pure waste transactions in Nigeria shows the span and patterns of Nigerians and payment preferences, reaching all new concreni and by extension, deepening the nation's financial inclusion drive. However, there have been complaints of proliferation of agents, lack of KYC to even issues of theft and other fraudulent activities. The Ambron executive spoke of a tax force for self-regulation, while clarifying other grey areas. Just take one of the case studies. I mean, part of the framework of the CBN is that a mobile money or bank agent should be in a brick-and-mortar location, like an address that is traceable. But what we have today are agents under umbrellas, trees, we have agents who are oaking this terminal. Rising from our fifth Amban National Conference held in Abidia last year, one of the resolutions that came out of our robust deliberations with all critical stakeholders was to begin self-regulation using our tax force. Victor O'Lodger lamented that the members are rough on the receiving end when it came to counterfeited bills and other fraudulent activities, making a renewed call for adequate trading. There was a robbery case that happened in the east and somebody's phone was snatched and those bad guys came to Lagos, they took the seam and transferred the funds to an agent. And the agent, innocently, actually served that customer, not knowing that that customer is actually an amrobar. What we find out now is that those merchants now turn the outlay to mobile money to get outlays. The growth in the number of POS businesses in the country has formed a major source of employment for Nigerians, especially the youths. Welcome back from that particular feature which is actually on dip in the financial inclusion policy of the federal government of Nigeria. We're moving on now, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI, has stated that the removal of your subsidy will save the Nigerian economy over $3 trillion annually, explaining that it is one of the best economic decisions to curb the nation's unsustainable debt. The president of the LCCI, Dr. Michael Olawale Cole, made the assertion in a statement at the State of the Economy yesterday. Deputy president of LCCI, Gabriel Ida Hosa joins me now to give more insight on the development issue. Many thanks for joining us, Mr. Gabriel Ida Hosa. Thank you. All right. Let's start at this way, Gabriel. Your chamber has raised concerns over the $800 million loan the federal government has secured to cushion the effect of your subsidy removal on poor Nigerians. What are the issues really? Well, the essential issue was that if we're going to raise money at all to address the palliatives required from removing the subsidy, then before it will be for that purpose. But if we take a $800 million loan, and we are going to distribute it to 50 million Nigerians selected by some means for six months, that does not address the impacts of removal of the subsidy on 200 million Nigerians. So really that's the summary of the issues about that loan. So there's, first of all, the size of the loan, the need for the loan, and the impacts. If the palliatives have impact 200 million Nigerians, then it doesn't address the objective. And then do we need to add another $800 million on top of our already well-known, loaded debt exposure for local and foreign? So these are all the issues around it. Our feeling is that first you want to look at what are the palliatives that are needed. Removal of subsidy affects the price of petrol. So what actions are we going to take to deal with that? One of the comments we made during the conference yesterday was that if we are going to go all the way to convert all vehicles that currently use petrol to gas, which is available and cheaper, then we are addressing the issue of the removal of the subsidy. If we are saying cost subsidies is going to be removed, the price of petrol is going to rise, there will be more inflation, and we want to give relief for all Nigerians, not just 50 million selected Nigerians. We want to take actions that affect all Nigerians. For example, take out school fees for secondary and tertiary education and say because we are removing subsidy, across the board, all Nigerians in public schools, we are taking out at least two shares and perhaps a large part of all Nigerians. So we want to look at actions that will be of direct benefit to all Nigerians. In selected groups, whichever science we are going to use to select. If I have to vote now, Gabriel, if I have to vote now, I'll cut into the statements you released yesterday. Let me just then quote your President Verbatim. The removal of your subsidy is among others expected to spur investment in domestic refining and petrochemicals and create a significant value chain for the various stakeholders. I want you to throw more light on that because you're looking at 3 trillion Nairat to be gotten out of the removal. How possible is this? Well, first of all, the reason why we don't have several refineries in Nigeria as far back as 30 years ago was simply because we held on to the subsidy regime that says that if you produce quite petroleum products, petrol, diesel, at your own costs, with your own investment, you must sell it at a predetermined price by governments because we want to help the guys. There's no investor in the world to do that. The investor must cover the cost of reducing the petrol and the product element for the shareholders and the lenders that finance the refinery. So if you now remove the subsidiary, the refiner, the first subsidy, then you are saying to investors, the way is open for you to invest in that sector of Nigerian economy. You can come in and build refineries and you can sell some Nigeria because you will sell at a predetermined price and you can also export. If we did that 30 years ago, clearly Nigeria will be the centre for petroleum refining and petrochemicals in the whole of Western Central Africa. We would actually be something like the Houston and Louisiana of America where you have several practically 20, 30, 40 refineries all lined up along the oil belts. So the investors are willing to invest not just for petrol but for petrochemicals and other products that come from the typical petroleum refining and petrochemical plants. They are willing and able because the market is there. 200 people of Nigeria are still there and probably many more will be born. But if we don't remove this subsidy, you cannot make a business case for anyone to build refineries in Nigeria. So the only people that have built refineries are those who are taking one, a faith that the petroleum subsidy removes at some point. Second, they are going to export all the most of the refined products so long as we keep the subsidy regime. Alright Gabriel, from your statement, though the planned removal of fuel subsidies may cause forward upward movement of inflation in the short term, the LCCI believes it's arguably one of the best economic decisions to reduce unsustainable debts and widespread corruption in the sector. But my question right now is that you said that if government has to do palliative measures, it has to affect the entire Nigeria. But what inflationary curves should be put in place really? Aside from the last time they talked about bringing them transport, you know, various embosses to help cushion the effect of high cost of transportation, what measures should they be looking at in the short term to curb this issue of inflation that may rise from this new policy? Well in the short term you cannot move the inflation because the transporters are going to increase their prices, that will translate into prices of products. So that is certain. What you want to do and what has been advocated is to now say if we are going to offer inflation in certain aspects of the economy during that transition period, what can we do to cushion that effect? And that's why we talked about looking at all the major items a typical family expenditure. So if school fees is taken out of me, for example, from a family, if public transportation is massively increased, there are cities like Lagos that have invested in a thousand, two thousand buses within a very short period. And during COVID, the country and several countries proved that you could do seven things in a very short time. So if the government says because we are removing subsidies, some of the money saved should be put into a massive provision of a very large number of public transportation solutions. Starting with buses and in the red barren area, not just five hundred one thousand there, but a very massive investment of a lot of that three, four trillion that we are saving in a massive production and import local assembly of buses in very, very large numbers that can be done. COVID has taught us that the country that is determined to address a major issue, if we take it as a major issue and say we need to produce whatever number, five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand buses to massively address the immediate expected rise in transport costs. Okay, but looking at it some other way now Gabriel, because if you look at it, there are other social economic implications, you know, what should government do about that specifically with unemployment rate at an unwholesome rate of about 40% because with this policy I'm sure that might even rise. 40% of what? Unemployment rate is at 40% as we speak. So what should government be doing about the social economic implications aside from providing a mass transit transport, what should they be doing because a school of thought believes that this policy might actually increase the rate of unemployment in the country. Well, the unemployment is created by several factors. The removal of subsidies will be one of them that will cause inflation. That is why some of these suggestions are meant to massively create employment. For example, if you start to compress all cars, particularly commercial vehicles from petrol to gas that will create a massive amount of employment. The people in the industry will give you the numbers. If you want to bring very, very large numbers of CKDs, completely up-down parts of buses and assemble them in the existing assembly plants we have across the country that will create a large number of jobs. Those two activities will create a value chain and additional value chain of more jobs that are going to be created because the huge activities of a massive assembly of buses will not all the parts of the buses will be coming. The current assembly plants we have in Nigeria will use some local reproduced parts. So you are going to create employment from the massive rollout of construction of assembly of buses, of the conversion from petrol to gas. We have the gas. We have a few plans for conversion and a massive employment will be generated just from those two things and the value chain. So there will be some amount of unemployment triggered by the removal of subsidies because some businesses may find costs of business too high to contribute. But the fact that you are going to generate a lot of employment by taking the actions that are related to replacing the removal of subsidies. Alright, as we begin to round off on this particular discourse now I really want to get some more clarification now because at your meeting yesterday you also emphasised that the PIA which is the Petroleum Industry Act should actually be implemented. I just want you to throw more light on that as regards to the removal of fuel subsidy for just about a minute as we round off with you. A lot of the PIA has been implemented. You have seen the new NNPC that is a very important part of it. The new agencies have been in place. I think the PIA itself expected that fuel subsidy will be removed at the same time as all those other actions that were taken. So what else is I saying that we should implement the PIA in full? We should not have suspended removal of subsidy for 18 months. And in fact, we should try to do it now. This government should not leave that very important decision to the new government for it appears the new government has decided that the new government will do it. That is the point we are making. An essential part of the PIA was not implemented at the time it was done. Alright then, thank you so much Mr. Gabriel Iida Hossa Deputy President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry. We do appreciate your time. Thank you. Alright, there is still much to expect from Business Insight at the moment we will be looking at the rail transport sector when we come back from this quick break to join us again.