Governor of
the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, over the weekend gave cheery news
on the state of the Nigerian economy. According to Emefiele, the worst days of
Nigeria's current economic recession are over. The Nation reports that Emefiele
in a chat with journalists this weekend, said based on these facts, the worst
in Nigeria's economic recession is over.
1.
Foreign
portfolio investors have injected $1 billion into the economy in the last two
and half months
2.
An
Emergency Spending Bill, which will enable the government shorten the process
of spending money (through award of contracts) is ready for the National
Assembly
3.Close to N374 billion will be injected into the economy this week to stimulate it. So far, N420 billion has been spent
4. Social spending will soon begin and there will be capital expenditure payments
5. One million traders will get subsidised loans.
Emefiele also spoke on the success of the foreign exchange policy of the government
“The only
way we can improve supply at this time is to say, ‘fine, those foreign
investors, those foreign portfolio investors, what do we do to make them come
again?’ And so we went into a flexible exchange rate regime. We opened the
market, we organised the market. We’ve seen some depreciation in the currency,
but I must say that at this time, we are somewhat happy that the result is
paying off, because in two and a half months, we’ve seen close to about
$1billion coming in as inflow into the market, and the reason this has happened
is because other than just liberalising the market, we bought into the market
the OTC (Over-The –Counter) features market. The Market that provides the
opportunity to reduce the volatility in the foreign exchange market so that
people do not bunch up their supply on the spot, so they can now go i and do
their business without disturbing themselves about the exchange rate. Those
were the actions that we’ve taken and today I must say that it’s been
successful.”
Speaking
further, Emefiele said:
“Naturally,
let me say this, if you are in a recession, basically what you do is to spend
your way out of recession. I will tell us what has happened between January and
now. I will tell you what actions have been taken to send us out of this
situation. Budget, like you know was approved in May 2016 and, of course, by
that time, we had started to see signs that this was going to happen.
Unfortunately, the procurement process is such a long one in the Public Service
and, of course you dare not breach, or break the rules of procurement and I
give you an example. When you start the procurement for an item, what happens
is that you have to advertise for bids in the newspapers. That process of
advertisement and calling for bids require that it has to be for 12 weeks.
Twelve weeks is three months. Now when you open the bid, you’ll now see
the numbers, you’ll now negotiate for the prices. After that you’ll go to the
Bureau for Public Procurement, get the approval. After that, maybe you’ll go to
the Federal Executive Council to get approval. You’ll find out that almost six
months would have elapsed and that is why government is saying we must shunt
this process. Shunting this process means that we need to have an Emergency
Spending Bill, which has now been prepared. I am aware it’s ready for the
National Assembly to take on for approval. What that does is, it removes all
the bottlenecks involved in the process of procurement so that government can
go directly and procure items and spend money to stimulate the economy.”
He said the
Federal Government will do everything to revamp the economy despite the
declining revenue from our main source which is the oil sector.
”Government
remains undaunted, the Monetary and Fiscal policies remain undaunted and we
also had in the budget a deficit of N1.8trillion; N900 billion was to be
sourced locally, another N900 billion was to be sourced in foreign currency,
and because the foreign currency is yet to come in, what the Monetary and
Fiscal authorities are saying is, ‘if the need arises, it would provide what is
called ‘Bridge Funding’ for the fiscal authorities so they can go ahead and
spend. When the proceeds of the foreign loans come, then, we can use that to
clear the bridge fund that has been done. That is allowed because this time we
do not need to wait and that’s why you may have read that the Minister of
Finance just came up and said so far we have spent about N420 billion and, in
fact, by this coming week (this week) alone another close to N374 billion would
be injected into the economy to stimulate it. The social spending will kick in;
other payments for capital expenditure will also kick in. Those are the things
that government is doing and I must confess to you that I’m optimistic that we
have turned the bend and going forward we will still spend more that will stimulate
the economy,” he said.
Emefiele
added that part of the plan that has been projected for 2016 is that one
million market women will benefit from subsidized loans at subsidized rates
that will come from “our micro, small and medium enterprise loan.
” The CBN is
discussing with the fiscal authorities and the Office of the Vice President
that handles social spending is also in discussion with the apex bank to see to
it that “we put it in place as quickly as possible so that market women
across the country can enjoy the micro, small and medium enterprise loan at
subsidised prices, the CBN chief added.
''Those are
some of the actions we are taking and I’m optimistic that going forward you are
going to see more action that will help to stimulate the economy and turn the
country around again,” Emefiele said.
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