The new Governor, of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Dr Olayemi Cardoso, has been admonished to take proactive measures to arrest the dwindling value of the naira.
The Director/Chief Executive Officer, the Centre for The Promotion of Private Enterprise, Dr. Muda Yusuf, said the new CBN Governor, was assuming the leadership of the CBN at a very crucial time in the economic history.
He said, “There is a serious confidence crisis in the foreign exchange market fuelling an unprecedented speculative onslaught on the naira. The economy is grappling with severe adverse effects of depreciating exchange rate, soaring energy costs, ravaging inflationary pressures, huge backlog of foreign exchange obligations that needs to be cleared and debt service obligations that need to be redeemed. Sadly, these outcomes are manifesting at a time when the country’s foreign reserves have been substantially encumbered.
“There is an apparent deceleration in the pace of economic reforms as the outcomes are at variance with expectations. The social costs of the reforms were substantially higher than anticipated, resulting in push-backs from the civil society.”
He said the economic management orthodoxy of market forces was being called to question in the light of the social outcomes of the market-oriented reforms.
He said there was a measured re-emergence of political economy with the reappearance of fuel subsidy and divergence in exchange rates.
This was evidently an economic management quandary that the new economic team would have to manage, and urgently too, he said.
Yusuf said, “Meanwhile, the CBN must ensure strategic and transparent intervention in the forex market to minimise volatility, as far as the reserves can support. In addition to the I and E windows, it has become necessary to create an autonomous window in the banking system where the currency can trade freely without any encumbrances. This is necessary to avert the diversion of remittances to other jurisdictions or the black market. We cannot afford to live in denial at this time.
“The clearance of the backlog of forex obligations should be accorded high priority to restore the confidence of domestic and foreign investors.”
