Nigeria’s government is aiming to remove subsidies on domestic fuel prices by the end of next year at the latest after investing in a mass transit system to ease the impact on the poor, Finance Minister Olusegun Aganga said.

“It is going to be sooner rather than later,” Aganga said in an interview in London today. Everything will be ready “by the end of 2011 at the latest. It could be this year.”

The subsidies will cost the government 520 billion naira ($3.4 billion) this year, compared with 1 trillion in 2009, central bank Governor Lamido Sanusi estimated in June. That compares with a federal budget deficit of 1.9 trillion naira this year, which Aganga said today he wanted to narrow in 2011.