The Nigerian Economic Summit Group is asking the Central Bank of Nigeria to address the challenge of multiple exchange rate windows in order to improve the inflow of foreign investments and diaspora remittances.
The NESG disclosed this in a communiqué from a meeting of its board of directors held on July 26, 2022.
The group said international investors, being savvy and rational, would not put their money where there was a real risk to their ability to access and repatriate investment proceeds or when the functional currency was in a sporadic depreciation.
Apart from the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Rate Fixing (NAFEX) mechanism where a dollar exchanges ay N420-N430, the parallel market window sells at above N650/$. Nigeria is also hard hit by revenue shortfalls with revenue to GDP around 7 per cent – among the lowest of the emerging markets.
NESG said that Nigeria must a decisive action to tackle the government’s revenue challenges which could not be divorced from leakages through the large-scale crude oil theft, difficult operating environment for businesses, and lack of innovation in tax collection/administration, among others.
Credit/Punch