LAGOS, Sept. 5(Xinhuanet)-- The Nigeria Labor Congress(NLC) and its allies will meet Monday to hammer out a detailed action plan over the recurring increase in fuel prices.

Owei Lakemfa, spokesman for the NLC, said that the meeting is scheduled to start at about 11 a.m.(1000 GMT) in Nigeria's largest city Lagos.

The reaction to the recent fuel price hike at Monday's meeting may be a nationwide campaign, probably including a general strike, which will undoubtedly give a negative impact to the almost simmering world oil prices.

Last month, Nigeria's petrol price went up from around 50 naira(38 US cents) to 65 naira(49 US cents) per liter, the tenth increase in fuel prices since President Olusegun Obasanjo took office in 1999.

Obasanjo has said that price increases are inevitable in view ofthe tightened government spending and deregulation policy introduced two years ago that meant long-standing government fuel subsidies will be abolished gradually.

According to the president, the government had financed about one billion dollars in fuel subsidies in the past six month as a result of high prices of petrol in the international market.

The development, he noted during a recent television chat program, could no longer be sustained as the money should be used to develop basic infrastructure to encourage economic growth for poverty eradication.

The 130 million Nigerians, of which over 70 percent live below a dollar per day each, however, see cheap fuel as a birthright, as the country earns billions of dollars from oil yearly.

Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer, but is forced to import more than half its daily demand of 30 million liters of fuel. Its four aged state-owned refineries are currently operatingat about 70 percent of their installed capacity. Enditem