Debating The Deregulation Issue

There are several ways the public sector affects the supply of goods and services. They include direct provision, subsidisation of prices, specification and enforcement of regulations for private sector provision, and sometimes a combination of two or more of these ways.

It is economic bottlenecks, scarcities, apparent market failures in resource allocation, a specific shortage or abuse of monopoly or Oligopoly that create the socio-economic conditions that justify public intervention.

In Nigeria where there is widespread and chronic poverty, high and rising levels of unemployment, and wide and growing disparities in the distribution of income, it will be foolhardy to rely on the market system to allocate resources. Why? The functioning of the market system is spontaneous – blueprints for the use pattern of resources are not prepared in advance.. Market mechanism is often described as an action without programme. And as pointed out by Gerald M. Meier in his book Leading Issues in Economic Development: “the market mechanism is criticized as being ineffective, unreliable, or irrelevant for the problems now encountered by developing nations”.

It is against this backdrop that one appreciates the passion with which many Nigerians particularly members of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Civil Society groups are opposing the deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry. On October 29, 2009, Labour and the Civil Society groups held a rally in Abuja in protest against the deregulation policy. To determine the popularity of the policy, the NLC President, Abdulwaheed Omar, during the rally, called on the Federal Government to subject it (the deregulation policy) to a national referendum.

What are the arguments against the policy. Believing that with the implementation of the policy, the pump price of petrol would rise above N100.00, labour is convinced that the poor masses would face untold hardship and every segment of the economy would be affected adversely.

It has also been argued that in a country such as Nigeria where there is no social security to cushion the effects of the current global economic crisis, this is not a holy time for the deregulation policy which will mean cutting down social spending. To make life easier for their citizens, in the face of the global economic meltdown, Europe, the United States of America (USA) and other countries across the world are increasing social spending by providing stimulus packages for their economies.

Besides, the implementation of the policy would face lots of problems as there is nothing to show that government has put in place a consistent and reliable policy framework which will guarantee investors’ confidence in the whole thing.

Worse still, there is no public education regarding the policy. Seminars and workshops are not being organised by government to explain to stakeholders their preparedness to implement the policy and to also elicit inputs from the people. So far, enough light has not been cast on the entire thing.

As part of the plan to reform the oil industry, the federal government on the other hand sees the deregulation of the downstream sector not only as a solution to the persistent fuel scarcity in the country but also as a means of conserving and directing the huge chunk of money spent in subsidizing oil importation to vital areas where it is needed in the economy.

The federal government has put the amount of money spent in sustaining the subsidy package within the last four years at about N2 trillion and that of 2008 alone at N654.76 billion. So the Minister of Finance, Mansur Muhter justifies government’s deregulation policy in these words: “We have found out that we are really subsidizing inefficiencies, fraud, racketeering in the whole production chain and in that context basically, given the competing needs for scarce resources, government felt we needed to do something. We are also subsidizing other countries.”

But all in all, the truth is that the federal government is not prepared for the implementation of its deregulation policy. The decision to postpone the implementation of the policy is therefore appropriate.

To prepare for the implementation of the policy is for government to do a whole lot of things to keep its house in order first. This involves providing level playing ground for all stakeholders and strengthening the industry for its effective and efficient operation. It involves making the country’s four refineries in Port Harcourt, Warrri, and Kaduna functional, and issuing licenses to individuals and the multinationals to set up private refineries. And it involves tackling the problems of infrastructure in the country, dealing with the Niger Delta dilemma, and addressing the lingering controversy over the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) which the Federal Executive Council has been pushing for approval by the National Assembly.

Nigeria is the sixth largest oil producer in the world. Its petroleum pump price should be one of the lowest in the world.

Vincent Ochonma