President Muhammadu Buhari has said that he has not changed his position about devaluing the Naira. He insists that he is not going to further devalue the Naira despite it’s steady fall in the parallel market.
Buhari said that Nigeria, which is not an exporting nation, would be worst hit if the Naira was devalued. He noted that only the Western countries, with lots of items to export, could benefit from the economic measure.
Contributing to a Presidential Panel Roundtable on Investment and Growth Opportunities at the opening session of the Africa 2016: Business for Africa, Egypt and the World at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the President asked Nigerians, who have developed taste for foreign luxury goods, to continue to pay for them rather pressure government to devalue the Naira.
“Developed countries are competing among themselves and when they devalue they compete better and manufacture and export more. But we are not competing and exporting but importing everything including toothpicks. So, why should we devalue our currency?”, the President said.
“We want to be more productive and self-sufficient in food and other basic things such as clothing. For our government, we like to encourage local production and efficiency”. Buhari stressed that Nigeria, being a mono-economy dependent on oil, and with a teeming unemployed youth population, the way out of the current slump in the global oil market, is for the administration to focus on agriculture and solid minerals development.
“The land is there and we need machinery inputs, fertilizer and insecticides,” he said.
Responding to a question on his performance since he assumed office, the President said that his administration had been quite focused on three fundamental issues of securing the country, reviving the economy and stamping out corruption.
