The chairman, Nigerian Economic Summit Group NESG, Mr Niyi Yusuf said Nigeria need to contain inflation, remove petroleum subsidies as well as increase non-oil revenue through tax expansion, collection efficiency in order to sustain the growth of the nation’s economy.
Speaking in Lagos at the Vangard Economic Discourse themed :Taming Inflation and Stimulating Growth: The Place of Fiscal Monetary Policies, Yusuf said Nigeria needs to increase government expenditure efficiency and transparency while reviving all forms of untargeted subsidies tax waivers and incentives.
Listing strategic reform recipes, he said there is need for the government to develop an integrated fiscal management strategy to expand the funding mix through public, Private Partnership (PPP), innovative, structured finance and intervention funds while the Central Bank of Nigeria need to adopt a single market-reflective exchange rate.
He, however, said that the government needed to facilitate domestic trade and boost economic value addition through the removal of forex and trade restrictions stressing that there is a need for the fiscal and monetary authorities collaboration to support the economy.
He expressed the need for government to ensure the alignment of economic and social development policies that pursue measurable and trackable productivity and employment outcomes, to ensure that economic growth is inclusive and reduced inequalities, boost competition by embedding it in well-aligned institutions and carefully sequenced reforms while CBN needs to set a clear access to finance.
He explained that in Nigeria , the momentum of economic growth recovery was slowed due to significant drawbacks from the performance of the country’s oil sector, especially crude oil production.
Speaking further, he said the country expanded by three percent in the first three quarter of 2022, adding that inflationary pressures cause a further decline in purchasing power while the food prices and other structural factors remained the primary drivers of the inflation in Nigeria.
He said purchasing power of the naira has fallen by 14.9 per cent, stressing that N1000 in January 2022 had fallen to N851 by the end of the year.
