Experts proffer solutions to rising inflation
By Simon Akoje
Some economic experts have urged the Federal Government to tackle the food insecurity challenges and check the depreciating level of Naira fuelling the inflation in the country.
They made this known in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday, in Lagos.
Prof. Bright Eregha, an economics lecturer at Pan Atlantic University, advised the government to adopt innovative ways of tackling insecurity and food shortage challenges facing the nation.
According to Eregha, the government should collaborate more with other countries within the subregion to bring the insecurity under control, particularly in agrarian communities.
“These should be sanity in agrarian communities where there are often disputes over land among farmers and herders which is impeding food output,” Eregha said.
He also urged the federal government to ensure fiscal discipline to address rising inflation rates.
He said the government also take measures to discourage the importation of commodities that have local alternatives.
“This will strengthen the local companies and reduce the value of imports into our economy,” Eregha said.
Also, former Executive Secretary, Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), Dr Uju Ogubunka, advised the monetary authorities to adopt appropriate measures to further halt the steady decline of Naira.
“More emphasis should be on how to incentivise local companies to export oil and non-oil products into the global market.
“This will lead to more foreign exchange inflows into the country and stabilise the Naira against other currencies as well as reduce the volume of importation over time,” Ogubunka said.
He said the Federal Government could support more private companies to establish companies produce petrol chemical products locally.
“This will lead to the country achieving self-reliance in refined petroleum products and stop the immense hemorrhage on our foreign reserves.
“This is one of the factors fuelling the inflation increases currently,” Ogubunka said.
Also speaking, an agric economist, Mr Nnamdi Ifenkwe, said the federal government should fully implement its all-year farming programme to address the food induced inflation.
Ifenkwe, Senior Manager at Nisi Agro Allied Services, said the government could continue to encourage more youths to venture into farming to achieve food sufficiency.
“We need to incentivise more youths to foray into modern-day farming so as to address the food shortage being experienced at the moment.
“Since the country’s population is generally increasing more young people is needed to be engaged in farming to bridge the gap,”Ifenkwe said.
He said the federal government should invest in more food reserves, because the existing ones are currently inadequate for the nation’s growing population.
He added that the government should adopt measures to ameliorate post harvest losses because its one of the factors impeding food output.
NAN reports that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said the headline inflation rate increased year-on-year (YoY) by 1.8 per cent to 31.7 per cent in February l from 29.9 per cent in January.
This represents the highest level of inflation recorded in 28 years.
Looking at the movement, the February 2024 headline inflation rate showed an increase of 1.8 per cent points when compared to the January 2024 headline inflation rate.
On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the headline inflate was 9.79 per cent points higher compared to the rate recorded in February 2023, which was 21.91per cent. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)
Edited by Modupe Adeloye/Olawunmi Ashafa
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