MARKETING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP OPPORTUNITIES OF SUBSIDY REMOVAL IN BAYELSA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

According to Ovaga and Okechukwu (2022), a fuel subsidy is a government discount on the market price of fossil fuels that lowers the price that customers must pay. Customers would pay less than the market price per liter of the petroleum product when subsidies are in effect. Fuel subsidies are a topic of discussion worldwide due to their enormous magnitude and impact on the welfare of citizens and a country's financial stability. The size of global fossil fuel subsidies is expected to rise from $325 billion in 2018 to $1 trillion in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. This amount is significantly larger than the total amount of money that governments in developing countries make, as well as the $204 billion that international aid is expected to provide in 2022. This has prompted demands that the worldwide fossil fuel subsidy be eliminated so that the money saved may be used to help the weak and impoverished in developing nations that require humanitarian
aid (Couharde and Mouhoud, 2020; Ozili and Ozen, 2021). However, the idea that the fossil fuel subsidy is a type of help since it lowers the cost of fuel for the poor makes its removal controversial.
Notwithstanding this positive argument, a substantial body of research demonstrates the detrimental effects of fuel subsidies, such as the rise in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (Sweeney, 2020), traffic jams (McCulloch, Moerenhout, and Yang, 2021), traffic accidents and untimely deaths (Parry, Black, and Vernon, 2021), lost tax revenue (Sweeney, 2020), and the widening gap between the rich and the poor. (McCulloch, Moerenhout and Yang, 2021)