FG to replace 41 items invalid for FX, says Osinbajo

The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osibajo, says the federal government is working on replacing the 41 items not valid for foreign exchange with a more trade policy-driven restrictions taking into account those items that are required and locally unavailable raw materials.

Prof. Osinbajo, also highlighted four key priorities to be executed, so as to completely turn things around for the Nigerian economy, and set the nation on a path of real growth with jobs creation.

Speaking at the platform, a programme organised by the Covenant Christian Centre, in Lagos recently, Osinbajo noted that in an effort to stabilize the macro-economic environment that Nigeria is focused on aligning fiscal with monetary policy and nudging the CBN towards the objective of more market determined exchange rates.

He said that adequacy of Power and Petroleum products resulting to energy sufficiency is key in growing the nation’s economy, adding that improving transportation infrastructure cannot also be left unachieved in order to be positioned on a path of real growth and job creation.

The Vice President explained that driving industrialization through small and medium scale enterprises, and-PLUS- delivering an effective social investment programme can do the trick.

Commenting on the direction the Nigerian economy is going, VP Osibajo, said, “The President launched the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, while referring to the budget speech in December 2016 as being the basis for the 2017 budget and mentioned then that the plan is built on the Strategic Implementation Plan for the implementation of the 2016 budget.”

He, however, assures Nigerians that “There is light at the end of the tunnel”, while looking at the agricultural sector, which he said forms part of the Nigerian plan to fully implement the diversification of its economy.

“We expected at least three major results; the first is that we would not have to depend on one source of revenue. In the past few years we depended solely on oil for revenues. But most of the revenues from oil was used to import items we either could make or grow. Food and refined petroleum products consumed most of our foreign exchange revenues”, he explained.

According to him, for us focusing on agriculture was key, two reasons. Agriculture and the whole agro-allied value chain is clearly the fastest way of creating jobs and lifting millions out of poverty.

“The majority of Nigerians are actually poor subsistence farmers. We decided that to move them out of poverty we will provide the right inputs, improved seedlings, and fertilizer and equipment so they could multiply their yield and make more money.

“Through the CBN’s Anchor Borrowers programme, we were able to provide financing for many hundreds of thousands of farmers. Taking rice as an example, local production has almost tripled.

“We are now producing about 5 million tons. We were importing over 580,000 tons in 2015 and by 2016 we were importing only 58,000 tons. A major problem before now was being able to mill rice paddy. Government has now supplied 200 mills of various sizes for cooperatives ( in addition to private sector efforts)”, he said.

He further noted, ‘If all goes well we could be producing all our rice by the end of 2018 and if we are able to do so, it means that the substantial amount that we spend on importing rice will be saved.

Explaining how it would happen, he said, “We provided improved rice seedlings to the farmers and then just teaching very simple farming practices that improves yield. Both Kebbi State government and IITA and Jigawa state, among many others have run excellent rice seed improvement programmes that have been of tremendous benefit.”

Also, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosunat the event said that if Nigeria spent money on the right things it will get the right result, adding that Nigeria is looking for money because during the boom years Nigeria did not spend the money its made on the right thing.

Similarly, former governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, described security votes as the biggest source of waste in the country and asked that governors be made to account for them, describing the security votes as unconstitutional.