Emefiele vows to continue to slap down on smugglers
The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Godwin Emefiele has recommended actions for Nigeria to take in 2021 in order to drive and sustain economic growth recovery in 2021 and beyond.
According to the CBN governor for Nigeria not to be left out of the massive global recovery in 2021 the country needs to sustain accommodative fiscal and monetary policies aimed at improving access to finance for households and business. He explained that it is imperative that the CBN continue to provide an accommodative monetary policy that will enable faster recovery of the economy, improve inflows of credit to households and businesses particularly to small businesses that badly need access to credit.
He stated that with the discovery and deployment of vaccines in 2021 Nigeria must prevent a resurgence in COVID-19 cases by ensuring that a significant number of our population is properly vaccinated.
Speaking on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) he pointed out that in the agricultural sector which was a key driver in taking Nigeria out of recession in Q4 2020 it is important that we not only sustain measures at increasing productivity in the sector rather than resolving to imported items.
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Emefiele clarified that the CBN has never said that the closure of the border should be perpetuity but the apex bank advocated for the closure of the borders because of some of the unfortunate incidents of smuggling of goods into our economy that was undermining the growth of our own local economy.
“CBN also supported the opening of the border but would continue to insist that activities of smugglers must be checked adding that the CBN will remain at the forefront to fight smugglers in this country and would not allow smuggling of banned goods.”
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“It is only by protecting our own local industries that we can create badly needed jobs for our economy. It is only by protecting our local industries then making it easy for our people to access low price credit that we can see growth for our economy.” He stated.
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“On information communications and technology another sector which has emerged as a significant source of resilience in mitigating the effect of COVID-19 on our economy in the fourth quarter of 2020, with contributions of over 14.7 percent to out GDP growth 4 percent point higher than the contributions the year earlier. The CBN in 2021 will encourage banks and other financial institutions to leverage ICT in improving penetration of financial services to households and SMEs whilst supporting productivity across key sectors in the Nigerian economy.”
The CBN governor said the recently announced infrastructure corporation which will be fully operational in Q2 2021 will be co-owned by the CBN, the African Finance Corporation, and the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority and would become fully operational by the second quarter of 2021. Like you all know it is in our aspiration that with equity of N1 trillion we should be able to monster other financing options, handle debt, other kinds of collaboration with the private sector both within and outside Nigeria to the tune of at least N14 trillion.
We are trying to see with N15 trillion we should be able to unlock the infrastructural potentials in our country, make ease of doing business easily so that businessmen can feel comfortable to do their business, make a profit and contribute to the growth of our economy. This vehicle will enable the use of public and private capital to support infrastructure investment that will have a multiplying effect on growth across critical sectors of our economy.
On improving foreign exchange flows, non-oil exports, the CBN intends to support measures that will improve our non-oil exports earnings significantly as a result we intend to aggressively implement our N500 billion export facility aimed at supporting the growth of our non-oil exports which will help improve more export earnings, exporters will be further encouraged to repatriate their export proceeds as stipulated under our laws.
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He further advocated for support from everybody stating that “We all must work together to see that Nigeria’s economy joins others particularly beginning from 2021 when we are beginning to see an opportunity to reset again that we cannot be left out in the race and anybody who wants to think that they can do anything to undermine economic growth and situation of our country we all must join hands to fight against this.”