President Bola Tinubu has approved a request from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd to use the 2023 final dividends owed to the federation for petrol subsidy payments, TheCable has reported.
The president has also approved the suspension of 2024 interim dividend payments to the federation to boost NNPC’s cash flow.
It was gathered that NNPC informed the president it would be unable to remit taxes and royalties to the federation account for now due to subsidy payments, which it referred to as “subsidy shortfall/FX differential”.
TheCable also reported that it has seen an NNPC forecast showing the cumulative petrol subsidy bill from August 2023 will reach N6.884 trillion by December 2024. This would result in NNPC being unable to remit N3.987 trillion in taxes and royalties to the federation account.
Although, total amount of dividends to be withheld or suspended is not known yet, it was gathered that NNPC is expected to pause the payment of interim dividends for eight months in 2024, from May to December.
