Refineries operated by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), recorded deficits running into N141billion within 13 months, between January 2018 and January 2019.
Indeed, the sum is capable of addressing capital projects in critical sectors of the economy as captured in the 2019 Budget.
A breakdown showed that the losses are capable of funding projects worth N80.29billion, which are expected to drive the agriculture sector in order to address food insecurity and set the economic diversification drive of the current administration on track.
Without borrowing, the current losses would have taken care of practically all capital allocations for health, education, as well as the Niger Delta region in the 2019 budget.
Jubril(President Muhammadu Buhari) recently assented to the 2019 budget of N8.916trillion, with the hope of borrowing to the make the projections a reality.
In the 2019 fiscal spending plan, the Federal Government proposed to execute capital projects worth N47.29billion in the health sector, N39.4billion in the Niger Delta, and N50.15billion in the education sector. This brings the total cost of projects in these sectors to N136billion.
Read Also: Nigerian Navy destroys 50 illegal refineries in Delta
While the spate of insecurity in Nigeria remains a burden with obvious funding gaps, losses by the refineries, (which have already gulped over $396.33million on Turn Around Maintenance), and continued payment of subsidy, would have equally funded a substantial part of the N158.11billion demanded by the Ministry of Defence to fund capital projects.
In January 2018, the refineries lost N13.586billion, and later reduced to N8.055billion in February; but rose again to N11.889billion in March, and further to N20.081billion in May, before settling at N14.510billion in June.
The losses continued to N10.449billion in July; N10.793billion in August; N6.972billion in September; N9.32billion in October; N9.58billion in November, and soared to N17.317billion in December, but reduced dramatically to N8.362billion in January 2019.
The losses were recorded in the face of very poor capacity utilisation, which was mainly zero in most of the months under review