CBN explains why economy’ll exit recession come September, but…
Before now, Nigerians had been inundated with permutations and insinuations that the economy will exit recession even before the end of second quarter of 2017, until last week, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) came out to claim that Nigeria will get out of recession before the end of September.
Speaking in an interview, Director of monetary policy at the CBN, Moses Tule said considering the fact that about N4trillion from 2016 budget is yet to be implemented and will be implemented within now and July, chances are that the economy may leave recession come September.
Though he failed to reveal from where the huge sum will come from, he went ahead to note that about N12 trillion to N13 trillion will be spent by government in 2017, and this will by all means get the country out of recession.
Tule who defended the optimism of Godwin Emefiele, governor of the CBN, on why Nigeria will get out of recession before the end of September, highlighted actions by fiscal authorities corroborating money policies.
According to him, “The economic growth plan has been launched, the IMF had cautioned that it is a good plan but that government should be very careful to follow through on the implementation, and I’m very sure that the fiscal authorities have taken that message very clearly”.
“The plan is good on paper but you’d need to follow through with implementation. Secondly, the budget has been passed, the 2017 budget has been passed and you’re talking about N7.4 trillion.
“We also have about N4 trillion from 2016 budget to be implemented between now and June or July. If we add that together, you are talking about maybe 12 to 13 trillion charted into this economy.”
Continuing, he said the inflow of foreign exchange and the removal of rigidity in the foreign exchange market should drive more growth in the second quarter of 2017.
“Given the tempo of injection of capital from the capital budget, you can see that things are already trying to pick up. For the first quarter alone, 18 key activities recorded very substantial growth.
“That underscores the optimism. Besides the stability we’ve seen, all that happened in the first quarter were against the kind of rigidity we still have in the foreign exchange market.
“Those rigidity has been addressed, manufacturers are not going to have the kind of restrictions they had in the first quarter and second quarter figures are actually going to be much better than we had in the first quarter.”
