This was said by Prof. Ken Ife on Friday during the Nigeria: The State of the Macro-Economy lecture at Godfrey Okoye University in Enugu, which was the university’s 10th convocation lecture. Professor Ken Ife, a development economist, claims that the Central Bank of Nigeria’s monetary policy is ineffective because 80% of the country’s currency is not being used.
According to him, the absence of the N2.6 trillion ($80 percent) that financial institutions were supposed to loan to the private sector in order to generate employment is strangling the economy. He claims that 40% of the country’s wealth is not in banks and that 40% of people are living in poverty.
They are preventing the market from being able to produce employment, and since tech has captured with us, we are unsure of how many are now in existence.
Ife, who serves as the ECOWAS Commission’s Lead Consultant, pointed out that the amount of counterfeit money in circulation could be greater than the amount of legal tender, making it hard for the Central Bank of Nigeria to estimate it. The economist continued, The Naira is also utilized in other nations without control due to the operations of money launderers and ECOWAS policy.
According to him, the Naira’s design should take 5 years, but we have been putting it off for twenty years. All of these have made it difficult for the country’s monetary policy to be transmitted and forced commercial banks to lend at higher rates.
Ife continued by saying that structural factors including a lack of power, poor roads, water quality, rail transportation, and rising costs—which were made worse by a 300 percent increase in the price of diesel—were to blame for cost-push inflation in the nation. According to the expert, it is difficult to produce enough of our currency because of money laundering, intensive Naira value speculation, regular ransom demands from kidnappers, and Naira usage as a secondary currency in the 15 ECOWAS nations.
According to him, 68% of producers always supply 90% of their own power, which drives up the cost of their products.
Our economy is heavily dependent on imports, which puts us in the global exogenous supply chain’s transmission belt and exacerbates the shortage of dollars. He remarked that this will aid in reducing the gap among official and black market exchange rates. (NAN)
