*Says Nigeria badly needs forex to fund imports
Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, has begged the Nigeria Port Authority and Nigeria Customs Services to help the Bankers Committee achieve the target of attracting $200 billion Non-Oil Export revenue into the country.
Making the appeal at the maiden edition of the biannual non oil summit organised by the Bankers Committee in Lagos yesterday, Emefiele stressed that apex bank alone cannot bear all the burden of making the adjustment needed to address all the challenges confronting the Nigerian economy.
“Monetary Policy alone cannot bear all the burden of the expected adjustments needed to manage these difficulties.
“These problems call for urgent design and steadfast implementation of other supportive, structural, and complementary policies that are broad based, coordinated and focused on complementing the work of the monetary authority”, Emefiele said.
Emefiele explained that the summit is in continuation of the RT200 programme aimed at attracting $200bn non-oil export revenue into the country over the next five years.
While appealing to Mohammed Bello-Koko, MD, NPA, to help the Bankers Committee to achieve the target of the RT200 programme, Emefiele said: “There have indeed been unbearable difficulties and challenges involved or faced by exporters in exporting goods out of Nigeria. My brother Koko, you are here, you have a lot of work to do, we need your support, I beg of you. You are in charge of NPA, please work with us. The Bankers Committee is ready in any way to provide the needed support that can address the challenges involved in our port operations in Nigeria.
“We truly and badly need forex to fund the import needs of our country. We can no longer continue as a country to depend on revenue from oil where we don’t have control over price and quantity, where there are a lot of challenges we are facing today.
“We have heard of people who want to export their goods queuing for weeks or months before their goods can go out. Because time is against us, in the short run, what can the NPA and Customs do for the exporters, whether they want to create or set up a dedicated route from which they can easily export their goods.
“We need those export proceeds badly. It is sad that because of the problem of finding an easier route for goods to be exported out of the country, Nigerian exporters prefer to transport by road or sometimes in barges from Lagos to Accra or Republic of Benin to export from there. Doing these we lose the opportunity to earn export proceeds.”
