The federal government has this past week indicated its gradual departure from over-dependence on oil sales in a new plan that banks on five major sectors of the economy.
According to the new five-year economic plan released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the country aims to reduce the debt burden, control inflation and raise the employment rate for youth.
It reiterates earlier sector-based plans that included a ban on the importation of 43 items to reduce the depletion of foreign reserves of $36.57 billion, which can only sustain importation of essential goods for nine months.
The plan has also retained the exchange rate of N420 to the dollar to reduce the impact of the erratic exchange rate on the economy and stabilise the external debt.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva said on Monday that the nation’s earnings, from oil and non-oil sectors, coupled with low revenue receipts from the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), have dropped by 60 per cent, putting the nation’s economy under serious pressure.
Godwin Emefiele, the CBN Governor said in the five-year plan Nigeria will seek “to preserve domestic macroeconomic and financial stability.”
By 2025, Nigeria hopes to have established a proper payments system infrastructure that will increase access to credit to all Nigerians, thereby raising the financial inclusion rate in the country, according to East Africa report.
According to Mr Emefiele, the government will continue to work with deposit-taking financial institutions to improve access to credit for smallholder farmers and Medium and Small Scale Enterprises (MSMEs), as well as consumer credit and mortgage facilities for bank customers.
The World Bank puts Nigeria’s GDP at $397 billion, the highest in Africa and one of the world’s biggest oil exporters, pumping out at least two million barrels daily.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) presented an inflation rate of 14.23 per cent for the month of October, indicating a 14-month continuous increase in prices.
CBN says it intends to grow the nation’s external reserves, and support efforts at diversifying the economy.
The bank has launched an automated trade monitoring system, which will reduce the time required to process export documents from one week to a day.