Eze Onyekpere, a financial expert, has urged Nigerians to develop appetite for locally-made products to curb the rate of inflation in the country.
Onyekpere was reacting to the latest Composite Price Index (CPI) recently published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which puts inflation rate at 9.2 percent in June.
The CPI measures the average change over time in prices of goods and services consumed by people for day-to-day living.
The NBS report stated that the CPI, which measured inflation, rose by 9.2 percent (year-on-year) and 0.2 percentage from the 9.0 percent rate recorded in May.
Onyekpere told NAN that if Nigerians should start buying locally-made products, it would curtail the high demand for foreign currencies and reverse the high inflation trend.
The expert, a Director at the Centre for Social Justice, an NGO, also urged the federal government to stop importation of fuel to curtail the rising inflation rate.
He said that government should encourage local refining of petroleum products in order to reduce the amount of foreign exchange spent on fuel subsidy.
“I understand it is up to 30 per cent of our foreign exchange that is going to the importation of refined petroleum products.
“So, there is quite a lot we can do to re-engineer the economy in this regard,” he said.
Explaining the reasons for the inflation, Onyekpere said that since Nigeria is an import dependent and monolithic economy, the crash in the price of crude oil, its major source of foreign exchange, had taken its toll on the economy.
He also identified the high exchange rate of the dollar to naira which according to him, stood at N241 to a dollar in the parallel market, as another reason for the inflation.
Onyekpere said the crisis in the North-East had also drastically affected agriculture, which used to be the mainstay of the economy in the zone, with multiplier effects on the other zones.
“Those that were trading in cattle, fish, beans and other produce are no longer doing that because a lot of them are displaced.
” In addition, we just came out of elections where there was so much reckless spending by politicians,” he said.
He, therefore, stressed the need for the federal government to come up with more policies that would discourage importation.
The CBN in June 23, stopped the sale of foreign exchange to importers of rice, private jets, textiles, tomato paste, poultry products and 35 other times. (NAN)
