As the present administration marks one year in office, reactions trails the various reforms introduced in the past one year under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu especially, the economic reforms which have left the majority of Nigerians in deeper economic austerity. Inflation is currently over 30 per cent and there are possibilities of it soaring higher. Naira value has plummeted after the float, just as Nigeria is facing the exodus of multinationals, thus worsening the unemployment nightmare.
These highlight severe financial strain on the average Nigerian whose purchasing power suffers value erosion on a daily basis.
However, regardless of these economic hiccups, the Honourable
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, offers hope, insisting there is light at the end of the tunnel.
In a recent interview with some media organisations, HM Edun provided a comprehensive overview of the country’s economic challenges and the government’s strategies to addressing them.
He noted that the Federal
Government is focused on agricultural productivity, infrastructure investment, fiscal responsibility, and attracting Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) which were critical components of the administration’s strategy to revive the economy and save it from financial bankruptcy.
*Assessing Tinubu’s Government Economic Agenda*
In assessing the economic agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Administration a year in review, HM Edun stated thus:
I would say Mr President has achieved relative stability in his first year in office. He has put the economy on a track of growth and has put together a package of intervention measures, especially in agriculture, which needs to be re-doubled, re-emphasized, and further extended in order to have the full effect. On one hand, the macro-economic measures which everybody knows to save the economy and bring it back from financial bankruptcy, save the FX market from chaos and basically a market that was stalled and was illiquid leaving businesses frustrated. Clearly, the initial measures taken by Mr President to stabilize the economy has led to an inflationary spike in terms of cost of fuel and secondly in terms of the exchange rate and also in terms of interest rates, the CBN defined its core mandate was to fight inflation and the number one tool to fight that was push up interest rates. In a nutshell, those were actions that were necessary but led to the spike in the cost of living for the ordinary Nigerian as well as increased cost for businesses. However, those measures are beginning to bear fruit. At a time when interest rates are high, which normally means that when businesses find it hard to borrow and invest, the economy is growing. People are finding a source of funds and equity, including the government putting in its own share of private public sector funding for infrastructure in particular and that is helping to create jobs and grow the economy presently. But on the other hand, inflation is high at 33.69 per cent, food inflation at over 40 per cent is worrisome but the fact is that inflation is coming down on a month-on-month basis (2 per cent). So, it is slow and it is expected to reduce. As we continue the dry season harvest and go into the wet season harvest, a lot of emphasis is placed on getting more agricultural input to get prices down and that will be a big factor in bringing down inflation. Recall that there have been intervention programmes to ameliorate the pains of Nigerians, which include direct payments of N75,000 to 15 million households, which is expected to yield dividends in terms of pushing help to Nigerians.