By Lydia Ngwakwe
Some experts on Tuesday said the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) must take proactive steps to make its RT200 FX programme achieve the desired results.
The experts made the suggestions in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Lagos.
Akpan Ekpo, a professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom, said the programme would shore up foreign exchange in the short and medium term.
However, he said for this to happen, in order not to allow foreign exchange to determine economic activities, the structure of the economy must change in favour of production so that non-oil goods and services would be produced in the economy and exported to earn foreign exchange for the country.
“It is when the economy is diversified and non-oil goods and services are produced domestically and exported to earn foreign exchange, then foreign exchange would not be a challenge,” he said.
Sheriffdeen Tella, professor of Economics at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, said RT200 FX programme was good as it might make some exporters give it a trial with fractions of what they had in their foreign account.
But he was emphatic that for the programme to benefit the economy, the apex bank must give importers assurance of ease or priority of getting dollars whenever required for imports.
Tella urged the CBN to have a policy that whoever would get forex to produce and export must channel the proceed into a domiciliary account, failure of which would attract punishment.
Prof. Hassan Oaikhenan of the Department of Economics, University of Benin, Edo, said for the programme to achieve its goals, the CBN must shore up the value of the Naira.
“The rapidly depreciating Naira serves to encourage the phenomenon of currency substitution in which economic agents prefer to hold the more stable hard currency.
“The question that follows is will an exporter, in response to the incentives that are spelt out in the programme, be willing to repatriate the foreign exchange earned? It is doubtful.
“Until deliberate policies are taken to broaden the sources of foreign exchange in the economy and to diversify it from borrowing and from crude oil, every effort in that regard, will have little potential to make the much needed big dent on the scarcity of foreign exchange in the economy.
“I had thought that the CBN should by now be appraising the successful nature or otherwise of the policy of giving N5 incentive for every dollar that is received from abroad by beneficiaries of remittances from abroad.
“That, in my opinion should serve as the basis for the CBN to proceed to embark on the RT200 Forex Programme,” Oaikhenan said.
The RT200 FX Programme is a set of policies, plans and programmes for non-oil exports that will enable Nigeria attain its lofty yet attainable goal of 200 billion dollars in FX repatriation, exclusively from non-oil exports, over the next three to five years. (NAN)
