The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has made clear to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that Nigerian government will not kill Nigerians by agreeing to float the country’s local currency, the Naira.
The CBN’s Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, who made this known on the sideline of the ongoing IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC, emphasized that floating Naira and other undesirable economic policies will amount to killing Nigerians.
Okorafor, who was obviously reacting to calls by the IMF for the Naira to be floated, said that it would not make sense for the country to introduce a policy that will ‘kill’ Nigerians.
“If we float the naira and allow speculators and those with corruption money and all the people who create the bubbles to launch into the market, you can yourself imagine the kind of situation we will find ourselves. Our economy has its own peculiarities, and we cannot kill our people in the name of floating the naira.”
Okorafor said that the Nigerian market is extensively liberalized already and that the call for the floating of the naira is unnecessary.
”Yesterday, when Madame Lagarde (IMF boss) was discussing the economy of Egypt, she lamented the devastating inflation that is in that country.
“Egypt has half of our population, Egypt receives about $12 billion in foreign aids and several billions in tourism. We are 180 million people, our infrastructure is so poor and the productive capacity cannot be fast enough to rise to benefit from massive depreciation.
“If you float the naira today, and given the discoveries by security agencies, you’ll discover that our case will be terrible.
“If Egypt today has an inflation rate of almost 31 per cent, remember Angola also has about 36 percent inflation, ours is at 17.26 per cent. [myad]
