Recession looms again, Emefiele warns

Titus Akhigbe, Benin

Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele has expressed worries that the country might slide back to recession if measures are not taken to tackle the high rate of unemployment.

He expressed this view while delivering a lecture titled: “Beyond the global financial crisis: Monetary policy under global uncertainty” at the University of Benin.

Emefiele said the country has made progress in the year under review, but more efforts must be made to reduce the country’s unemployment rate.

“From some of my concluding remarks, you may have observed whether you like it or not, there is global uncertainty that will unfortunately most certainly lead to another crisis.

“The question should be how we as Nigerians, particularly our leaders, I am talking of monetary and fiscal policy authorities, how are we preparing our country for the next set of crisis?

“We have luckily exited recession; we have seen recession pending downward to about 18.72 per cent in 2017 to about 11. 37 per cent today.

“We have seen reserve moving up, but unfortunately, we still have issues and those issues bother around unemployment rate and those issues bother around how we prepare our country,” Emefiele stated.

Enumerating the efforts made by the CBN to stabilize the nation’s economy, he said the introduction of the investors and exporters window has helped in shoring up the country’s external reserves.

He said the turnover from the initiative has reached over $48 billion since the inception of the window while foreign exchange reserve has risen to $45 billion in April 2019 from $23 billion in October 2016.

The CBN governor added that the Nigeria’s current stock of external reserves is now able to finance nine months of current import commitments.