Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof Kingsley Moghalu, has said the naira can only be strong again if Nigeria becomes an export-driven economy.
Moghalu made this known on Monday during the 29th edition of the annual Nigerian Economic Summit held in Abuja, the nation’s capital. The Summit is a yearly gathering of high-level public and private sector leaders for dialogue on the Nigerian economy.
This year’s edition was tagged ‘Pathways to Sustainable Economic and Transformation and Inclusion’. While reacting to a question on how to fix the free fall of Nigeria’s local currency, Moghalu said the approach to solving the naira’s problem should be a long-term one.
“The way to fix the naira has problems is a combination of things. Some of them are short-term, but let me start with the long-term because we’ve been trying to fix the problem of the naira for a long, long time. It’s just been getting worse,” Moghalu said.
“The only way you can fix the naira is that the Nigerian economy needs to become a productive export-driven economy,” he affirmed.
The political economist, however, lamented that the country has not devised a robust plan to make the naira strong.
“I can’t say this enough and I’m not the only one who’s saying it. But up till today, we have not seen a comprehensive plan with targets to achieve this,” he said. “And even when plans are made, they are not always as informed as they should be. But I don’t know if you heard the President today because I heard him talking about clearing the backlog and doing all of this.
“You see. I mean, it’s important to clear those battles because one of the problems and a major problem that is affecting the naira is confidence.”
Source: Vanguard
