Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele says CBN in the next five years, will aggressively
pursue policies that will further diversify the Nigerian economy.
Emefiele said this in an
interview with newsmen on Friday in Nsukka, Enugu State, after a Special
Convocation of the University of Nigeria (UNN), where he was conferred with an
Honorary Doctorate Degree in Business Administration.
The pledge was coming after the
Nigeria Senate, on Thursday confirmed Emefiele for a second term in office as
CBN Governor, starting June 3.
Emefiele said the CBN in the next
phase of his administration would consolidate on already existing policies.
“Nigeria belongs to all of us and
we have a role to play to make sure things get better.
“I will also emphasise that
Nigerian policy makers are good at developing policies, but the biggest
challenge of the Nigerian economic policy is that people try circumventing
policies.
“Given this opportunity now, we
will make it very difficult for people to circumvent economic policies.
“We must learn to respect our
policies. If you don’t respect the economic policies of this country, and you
fall short of our economic policies as an economic saboteur, you will be dealt
with,” he said.
Emefiele, who is the 11th CBN
Governor, began his five-year tenure on June 3, 2014.
Some of the major policies
undertaken by the apex bank in the last five years included the Anchor
Borrowers’ Programme which aimed at increasing the country’s local food
production and conserving the foreign reserves.
The CBN took the decision to also
ban 41 items from accessing foreign exchange through official routes to
encourage local production of the items and simultaneously conserve the
nation’s depleting foreign reserves.
Since then, the CBN had raised
the number of items affected on the list to 43, with the inclusion of
fertiliser and textile products.
Some of the items not valid for
foreign exchange at the Nigerian window included rice, cement, margarine, palm
produce, beef, vegetables, poultry and eggs, private airplanes, wooden doors
and Iron rods, among others.
The CBN also introduced the
multiple foreign exchange system, which led to the creation of the
Inter-bank/Wholesale, Invisible, Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and the
Investors/Exporters’ windows.
Also, in 2018, the CBN signed a
bilateral currency swap agreement with the People’s Republic of China worth
about 2.5 billion dollars.
The currency swap agreement was
designed to aid trade transactions between China and Nigeria and remove the
need to first source for U.S. Dollars before payments for transactions
involving the two countries.
The CBN through the Banker’
Committee and in collaboration with all banks in Nigeria also inaugurated a
centralised biometric identification system for the banking industry tagged:
“Bank Verification Number (BVN)”.
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