call for behavioural change for stable exchange rate
Analysts have said that adjustment to the Nigerian economy is going to be painful and hard, as they called on Nigerians to change their appetite as well as their behaviour and be more patriotic towards locally produced goods in order to ensure stable exchange rate and conserve the country’s external reserves.
Stakeholders, who gathered at the 2015 seminar of the financial services group of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) held yesterday in Lagos, were concerned that Nigerians had an aversion to locally produced goods.
“What we need is patriotism. Do you want your country of the future as Malaysia did? It could be hard, it could be painful but there is no gain without pain,” Francis Ikenga, chairman, financial services group, LCCI, said.
Abimbola Olashore, CEO, Lead Capital plc, said naira devaluation was not necessarily the problem but there was need to focus more on diversification of the economy.
“If we talk more about diversification than foreign exchange, we put things in focus. If you are not increasing productivity you are wasting time. The change we are all clamouring is here, but it will be a painful change,” he said.
From the perspective of exchange rate management, Nigeria seems to have similar policies with the other countries like Indonesia, South Korea, India, China, South Africa, and Brazil, among others, but differs in the sense that policy changes in Nigeria are more frequent than in those countries, Olashore said.
According to him, due to imperfections and distortions within the Nigeria economy, demand for forex in relative terms appears to be more than in those countries. This is amplified by the narrow source of Nigeria’s foreign exchange – which is crude oil sales proceeds.
In his opening remarks, Remi Bello, president, LCCI, said the government needed to build local capacity to understand Nigeria’s cyber infrastructure to the extent of ensuring ICT users of security assurance.
Represented by Remi Alo, honorary life vice president, LCCI, he said recent restrictive foreign exchange policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had had some unintended adverse consequences.
Other speakers who spoke on dealing with the challenge of cyber crime in the economy include Basil Udotai, managing partner, Technology Advisors, and Sola Tinubu, managing director, SCIB Nigeria and Company Limited.
