Nigeria Needs Policies That’ll Stimulate Growth, Create Jobs — Emefiele

June 8, 2019

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Nigeria Needs Policies That’ll Stimulate Growth, Create Jobs — Emefiele

Governor of Nigeria’s Apex Bank, Mr Godwin Emefiele has said that Nigeria needs to formulate policies that will stimulate growth and create jobs in critical sectors of the economy.

The Central Boss Boss who made the statement on Saturday during a consultative roundtable titled, “Going for Growth” with some economic stakeholders in Lagos, added that such efforts will serve as insulation against global shock.

Emefiele who recently was sworn in for a second term of five years said that that leaders and policy makers needed to strengthen their resolve in achieving the goal.

He also said that would assist in putting in place unconventional policies that would help insulate the economy from shocks in the global economy.

The CBN governor said in doing that, the CBN had recently been caught in a syndrome termed, ‘The Dilemma of Monetary Policy in Nigeria’.

Emefiele said, “Typically, for a nation to be seen to be prosperous, any citizen of that country will expect macro-economic indices such as low interest rate regime, stable exchange rate regime and robust reserve position, low inflationary environment, as well as an environment of full employment.”

Emefiele said the apex bank had taken a number of actions in the last five years to support the growth of the economy which had helped in achieving the macro-economic stability.

This, he said, had led to inflation trending down to 11.37 per cent from 18.72 per cent in January 2017; exchange rate stability at current levels with considerable convergence and reserves build up to current level of over $45 billion compared to $23 billion in October 2016.

His Words:

“Although, we had hoped to achieve a lower level of interest rate, this became impossible given the normalisation of monetary policy in the United States and the over 60 per cent drop in crude oil prices between 2014 and 2016.

“You will agree with me that the consequences of these unfortunate occurrences was a heightened inflationary pressure on the economy and monetary policy had no option but to embark on a regime of tightening so as to rein inflation.

“We also deployed measures aimed at supporting improved productivity of the Nigerian economy by restricting access to foreign exchange on 43 items that could be produced in the country.

“We have also strengthened our intervention programmes which helped in restarting the flow of credit to critical sectors of the economy.

“As part of our interventions, we introduced the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP); a programme that helped to improve access to credit to Small Holder Farmers through our intervention programmes such as Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme and the Real Sector Support Fund.

“We have enabled large agro processors and manufacturers expand their operations, thereby supporting our efforts at improving domestic production of goods,’’

NAN