Bisi Adewumi
Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (LCCI), president, Asiwaju (Dr) Michael Olawale-Cole, CON has advised the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to consider converting the country’s lower currency notes into coins to facilitate highly repetitive retail transactions and to avoid printing pieces of low-value notes with a short lifespan.
Asiwaju Olawale-Cole offered this advice while giving his opening remarks at the CBN Special Day during the 2022 Lagos International Trade Fair on Thursday.
Speaking further at the event themed, “Connecting Business, Creating Value”, the LCCI president said the theme underscores the importance of relationships and networking among business for trade partnerships, investment and wealth creation. ” More importantly, the theme captures the importance of business leveraging the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCTA) to explore opportunities across African countries”.
He stated that, as a nation, we are faced with extremely challenging environment where inflation is being driven by a range of different shocks.
“Inflation rate as at September 2022 has surged to 20.77% and looking ahead, the short to medium-term inflation outlook presents clear upside risks in the context of extraordinary uncertainty in the economy.
“The depreciation of the naira has also added to the build-up of inflationary pressures. Price pressures are evident in more and more economic sectors, in part owing largely to the impact of high energy costs feeding through the whole economy. Growth in the Nigerian economy is estimated to have slowed down in the third quarter, with IMF projections lowered by -0.2% points to 3.2% in their World Economic Outlook update of October 2022.
According to the LCCI boss, amid heightened economic uncertainties, it is important to note that Nigerian Financial Market has remained resilient and stable with Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) and the Liquidity Ratio (LR) at 13.4% and 40.1% respectively which are above the prudential limits.
He noted that Non-Performing Loans (NPLS) improved slightly at 4.8%, below 5% Regulatory Threshold. He urged the monetary authorities to maintain a stern look at all the crucial indicators to mitigate risks and threats facing the economy.
In his words, ” The Central Bank of Nigeria has remained loyal to its mandate- to ensure price stability. Though, the decisions to bring inflation back down may be difficult but the consequences of letting too-high inflation become entrenched would be much worse for everyone “.
” We expect the CBN to work towards controlling the driving forces of the major economic indicators to drive better economic performance in the months and quarters ahead”.
He urged the CBN to implement the correct calibration of monetary policy considering the resilience of our economy and the implications of the global monetary spill overs to financial stability.