FEATURE ARTICLE

Festus TokunboTuesday, September 20, 2016
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BUHARI'S ECONOMIC PLANS IS TOO WEAK TO CLOSE THE RECESSIONARY GAP

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n 21st August 2016, the Nigerian economic team headed by Vice President yemi Osinbajo highlighted six economic plans to recover the Nigerian economy from recession. The Nigerian government wants

  1. Stimulate the economy with stimulus spending on critical sectors of the economy.

  2. The government wants to sell or lease the Nigerian assets to raise $50 billion to shore up the country foreign reserve.

  3. The government wants to amend laws that make States access their fund that is trapped in Universal Basic Education commission.

  4. The government also want to reform Nigerians embassies and government agencies like CAC, NAFDAC to improve their services to improved their services to the

  5. The government wants to formulate policies that suites local contractor and suppliers.

These plans are too weak to close the recessionary gap. The Nigerian economy enters recession as a result of deep drop in oil prices at the world market, because Nigerian is majorly an oil based economy. Without a sound economy plans, Nigerian may be in depression before January 2017. Since l arrived Nigeria in July 2016, l have traveled about 100 hours by road. Every State l had visited; l saw deep forest in both left and right from one State to the other. President Buhari is planning to sell or lease Nigerian long acquired asset to rescue the Nigerian economy. We need leaders that can turn our deep forests into wealth, not one that sell our long acquired assets. Selling our asset would only rescue the Nigerian economy for a short period; it would not provide a sustainable solution to Nigerian economics problems. Real leadership is the ability to create wealth out of thin air. That's why l believes that most of President Buhari's economic team lacked the relevant knowledge to rescue the Nigerian economy. I think President Buhari may need to overhaul his cabinet to save the Nigerian economy.

These are 6 economics plans that can save the Nigerians economic from recession within the next 6 months if fully implemented and executed.

  1. Tap into every loop holes in every sectors of the Nigerian economy. Nigeria lost billions of dollars annually in its real and financial economy as a result of weak institutions and poor leadership. It's high time to block all these loopholes and tap into these sources of wealth for economic development. Some of these sectors and loop holes includes

    1. Aviation sectors. Nigeria lost $1 billion to foreign airlines annually in its aviation sector. The transport Minister can invest $1 billion on commercial jets and start flying Nigerians to India, China and other Asian countries. With proper management, there would be a return on investment within 6 months.

    2. Exchange rate manipulations. With a Purchasing Power Parity of over $1 trillion dollars annually, Nigeria lost over $500 billion annually on exchange rate manipulation. To stop this, Nigeria policy makers must revalue the Nigerian currency. Most countries have done this to safe their economies during recession. Argentina pegs its peso to U.S. Dollar as 1 to 1 in 1991. Even the small West African country, Ghana pegged its Cedes to U.S dollar as 1 to 1 in 2007. Nigeria government should pegged Naira to US dollar as 1 to 1 to stop exchange rate manipulation and rescue the Nigerian economy.

    3. Slash the interest rate to below 10% to provide cheap loans to local industries. Nigeria lost about $100 billion to foreign investors annually through interest rate manipulation. Nigeria interest rate presently at 25% on lending, and 3.3% on saving, local production would be hindered as small scale industries that represent higher percentage in most develop countries would not thrive in Nigeria. It's time to slash the interest rate to less than 10% to provide cheap loans to local industries. These may lead to capital flight, but inflow of capital also destabilizes the exchange rate. Most smart countries are now controlling inflow of capital into their economies and using quantitative easing to boast their financial economy. Interest rate in the EU is zero percent, 0.3 in the UK and less than 3% in the United States, so Nigeria with less than 10% as against the present 25% would still be attractive to speculators.

  2. Explore aggressive quantitative easing to boast the economy and keep it running again. Since 2008 financial crisis, US, Japan, E.U and U.K are using quantitative easing to rescuing their economies from recessions. It's time to employ quantitative easing to aid key sectors of the Nigerian economy. In August 2016, when the UK economic began to sink into a recession as a consequent of the BREXIT, the British government hurriedly employed quantitative easing to safe its economy. Nigeria can follow suite to rescue its economy from recession.

  3. Public Private Partnership for infrastructural development; Government should stop funding capital projects. Rather public/private partnership should be implored to construct Nigerians roads and other infrastructural development. With PPP, we can builds all dilapidated Nigerians roads through private funds and asked them to manage and run the roads for the next 30 years by collecting moderate tolls fees from every cars that ply the roads. Every sectors of the Nigerian economy includes power, infrastructure, housing and transport can actually be transformed through effective Public Private Partnership

  4. Government should be more focus on investing fund on income generating economics activities: the Nigerian government wants to invest billions of dollars on capital project. The government also wants to collect Eurobond before December 2016 for capital project. This is not a smart economy policy. The government should be more concerned on investing on its production capacity, as this would provide returns on investment and quickly diversified the Nigerian economy from oil.

  5. STATE LED AGGRESSIVE AGRAIN ECONOMY. According to recent studies, Nigerian households spent 54% of their incomes on foods. In the advance nations, less than 10% of incomes are spent on foods. This statistics simply indicate that Nigerian agricultural sector is dead. To revive the Nigerian economy, government must tap into the Agrarian economy to slash down the costs of foods and services. Government should provide N5 million loans and 50 acres of lands each for 1 million young graduate that are ready to go into aggressive modern mechanized farming. These would bring down the cost of food drastically within 3 to 6 months, reduce inflation and strengthen the Naira against the US dollars as there would be less demand for the forest.

  6. STATE DRIVES TOWARDS ECONOMIC PRODUCTION; every state should become a productive economy by turning their farms produce to finished product for Nigerians consumption. Nigerians consume 1 million bottles of juices a day at 2 dollars per juice. In order word, Nigerian spends $2 million on juice consumption daily. Benue state is the food basket of the nation, if the government set-up factories to process it fruits to juice and produce l million juices per day, they would generate 2 million dollars per day and $60 million per month; that's 10 times more than what Bauchi State presently receive as allocation from the federal government. These would also generate thousands of jobs for its youths. Every state has the farm produce to process to finished product for Nigerian consumption. The greatness of Nigeria lies in its consuming economy. Nigerians spent more on consumption that what it realize from GDP. Every of the 36 states can generate millions of dollars monthly by turning their attention from federal allocation to economic production. This can be done by processing their farm or mineral produce to finish product for Nigeria consumption. Nigerians spends $1.2 trillion on consumption annually. This is a great source of wealth for the Nigerian States. Nigeria becomes the world largest consumer of champagne in October 2015. This is a great source of wealth for Delta State, Port Harcout State and Bayelsa State to refine their hard local gin to champagne for Nigerian consumption. 30 million Nigerians buy a pair of shoes every month. If every State in Nigeria drives towards economic production, the country's GDP would be doubled, the Nigerian currency would be strengthen against the US dollars, there would be massive employment for the Nigerian youths, inflation would drop drastically and the Nigerian economy would be out of recession in 6 months.

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