CBN seeks additional  control on hot money

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is seeking the adoption of policies to discourage frivolous importation of foreign currency and hot money into the country. CBN intentions are coming on the heels of  the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)  recent data estimating total value of capital imported into the country in the second quarter of 2017 at $1.79 billion. Capital importation denotes inflow of foreign currency into the country in cash, portfolio or shares by investors.

In a report released midweek, NBS said that foreign currency inflow in the second quarter was $884.1 million more than the figure recorded in first quarter of 2017, representing a growth of 95 per cent. Speaking on “The Dilemma of Monetary Policy during a Recession:Potential Options for Nigeria,” at the Nigerian Bar Association(NBA) conference in Lagos, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, CBN governor, advocated three policy measures for engineering economic growth and curbing inflation.

These, according to him, include rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure; jumpstarting agriculture and agribusiness; boosting non-oil exports as well as formulation and implementation of import-reducing policies. He said: “Given the persisting drop in oil prices, we need to take bold and decisive actions at fundamentally changing the structure of our economy. I have always talked about the damaging effects of Nigeria’s unsustainable  propensity to import.

“In line with Winston Churchill’s admonition to ‘never let a good crisis go to waste,’ the CBN believes that it is high time we started looking inwards and stopped supporting the importation of items that we can produce locally using Nigeria’s hard-earned foreign exchange.
“While such policies may seem controversial, its variants have proven to be highly effective in other climes and even here in Nigeria.