 And the International Monetary Fund has said Nigeria will likely depend on overdrafts from the CBN to fund its proposed 2.55 trillion-dollar petrol subsidy bill. This is following the federal government plan to extend the fuel subsidy regime by 18 months. The IMF said this in its Nigeria Selected Issues paper reports. The report was prepared by its staff team of the fund as background documentation for its periodic consultation with Nigeria. According to the report, fuel subsidies negatively affect the country's fiscal position, increasing fiscal deficits. Now joining us now via Zoom is Dr. Moda Yusuf, the former Director General of Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Thank you for joining us. Okay so now we have a 2.55 trillion-dollar petrol subsidy bill and IMF is warning against fresh boring. What are your recommendations at this crossroad? Well it's a very difficult choice that we are faced with because 2.55 trillion is a lot of money. By the time you add that to the original budget figure we are getting close to the 20 trillion NARA budget. And how are we going to fund it? As of November last year, actual revenue as we got under the 2021 budget was just about, was less than 6 trillion. Now we are faced with a budget of almost 20 trillion. Projected revenue is 10 trillion. What is the guarantee that we even get that 10 trillion? The deficit in the budget is 5.8 trillion. So that means the deficit will be going to close to 10 trillion. So it's going to create a whole lot of macroeconomic challenges. It's going to worsen the exchange rate depreciation. It's going to worsen inflation. And it's going to worsen the state of poverty of the citizens. The impacts of this macroeconomic effect will be worse than the removal of forced subsidy. That is it. Already a lot of people are complaining of high prices and the worst enemy of the poor is inflation. It's not even forced subsidy. So it's a very challenging situation. The options you have one is for government to see how it can cut down its expenditure drastically. The second option is to see how we can accelerate domestic refining. Already in the original budget figure, that's a provision of subsidy up to June or July. This was about 400 billion. If by mid-year we are able to get the refiners up and running, whether the NMPC refineries or the dangote refinery, that may be a way out. Or we pray that there's a crash in oil price. Because as an oil producing country, we are no longer benefiting from high oil price. If anything, high oil price is penalizing us. Even more than some non oil producing countries. Why many oil producing countries are celebrating? We are suffering more. Cost of subsidy is increasing. The cost of diesel has gone up. The cost of evasion of oil has gone up. Kerosene costs has gone up. So costs are increasing. So it's a very, very difficult situation. I do with the FIAS S.C.R.E. by IMF. If we continue this way, we are getting close to almost bankruptcy. Okay. So Dr. Yusuf, how do we now manage our fiscal deficits in this situation? Well, the fiscal position, what can we do? We have to just see how we can, because the National Assembly has been pushing for more revenue, has been pushing the MDAs to go and look for more revenue. Where is additional revenue going to come from? They are coming to the private sector. What capacity do the private sector have to give them more revenue? Unless they want to kill all the investors. So we have to just look at our expenditure profile. Let's scale it down as much as possible. Let's see what we can do about local defining. And let's also pray that oil price comes down. If it comes down, all this pressure will also come down. I think those are the only options you have. Okay. Hopefully it comes down. Thank you very much Dr. Yusuf for joining us on the news updates.