 The Nigerian Economic Tainability Plan, the first question I want to say is that it's a great document in theory, but how are you going to pay for it? How are you going to pay for all the wonderful lofty ideas within those pages of this document? Thank you very much first. Let me say how extremely grateful I am to Africa Report and to Patrick and yourself, Donu, for kindly putting this together and giving us an opportunity to hold a conversation around the Economic Tainability Plan. It really is an honour to join so many friends and colleagues and Nigerians and partners and non-Nigerians everywhere for this webinar, so thank you very much. Now, just to your question as to how we intend to fund the Sustainability Plan, the plan will cost 2.3 trillion Naira, which is about 6 billion Naira or so. Now, the plan is, this is on stream, 500 billion Naira is budget resources and this is derived by drawing down special accounts dedicated to supporting certain sectors, so that is already in the budget, 500 billion dollars. Now, the rest of it, about 1.3 trillion will be from structured loans given through the CBN for the special projects that we have. So, for example, the CBN will be giving facilities to farmers under our Jobs for Agriculture Program, which is a mass agricultural program, in the same way to be given structured loans to a mass housing program as well as to 5 million solar connections programs. So, essentially what we're doing is getting loans through the CBN to pay specifically for the mass housing program, the mass agriculture program as well as the solar connections program and then there are several other initiatives which I hope we'll be able to talk about, especially initiatives of small business and all of that. But that's the structure of our financing of the scheme. As you well know, I mean it's a program that was put together in response to the pandemic. So this is almost entirely out of budget. We had to do a revised budget to be able to accommodate these expenditures and revenues have dropped, as you know, from the pandemic almost 60%. So basically, you know, there isn't much room, there isn't much fiscal buffer for us. So we've got to be, we've had to be as creative as possible, which is why we had to go the route of getting the central bank to give loans for these various programs, which is the main source of funding. And then of course, I mustn't forget to say that, yes, we did get also, we did get 3.4 billion US dollars emergency financial assistance from the IMF rapid financing instrument, which, you know, is all part of the package as well. The IMF, you know, gave several developing countries this emergency financial assistance in response to COVID-19. And we got our own bit of that, which is the 3.4 billion US dollars. But that is not all going into the sustainability plan. It's going into several other part of it is budget support, part of it is we will apply to the sustainability plan. Thank you. Okay, so, well, when exactly did this program, when was it launched exactly? It was actually launched in May, May 2020. Yes, formerly. And so is everything on track on the finance in front? Because, you know. Well, I think that as far as that is possible. Again, don't forget that substantial part of it is by way of loans from the CBN. Really, I think more the implementation aspects of it, we're trying to get everything going. The financing is not the immediate problem, as I tried to explain, most of it is coming by way of loans and we already have 500 billion. So it's more the nitty gritty of ensuring that the loans get to those for whom it is meant. For example, our mass agriculture scheme, we intend to ensure that the individual farmers who will now map, we have about 5 million new farmers, we're bringing between 20,000 and 100,000 hectares of new farmland under cultivation. And we have about 5 million farmers at this time who have been geo-mapped to their land. So we have that number about close to 2 million of them have now been formally cleared to be able to benefit from the facilities. Now the logistics and all of that, making sure that they and maybe we'll have time to talk in a bit more detail about those projects. But it is more the fine points of getting the funding to those who should have it, getting the inputs in the case of farmers, ensuring that fertilizers get to them, improving seedlings get to them etc. Those I think are the more important challenges now. Okay, well sir, could you please give us an example? As you know farming is involved activity. We are at this time, we are getting all of our farmers together, just as I've explained, we have about 5 million farmers in all who are part of our scheme. And the way that this is being done is that the program itself tries to address all of the value chain issues from farm to table. For instance, we are linking small scale farmers up with aggregators or platform partners who will ensure that they have access to finance. So for example, we have Bobangona, they are what we call platform farmers or aggregators. That's a major farm, a major agricultural company. Now what happens is that Bobangona has a couple of thousand, just as an example, 30,000 farmers who work with that company. Now they are aggregators, they also ensure that each of the farmers has access to finance, of course this finance is coming as you know through the central bank by way of the facility I just described. They give them agricultural extension services and inputs, seeds and fertilizers so that each of these farmers is more or less supervised by a platform partner or an aggregator such as Bobangona. A major farm. Now what happens then is that when the output comes, when the harvest comes, Bobangona takes all of that. So there is a guaranteed off-tick, whatever they cannot take, the government takes that for its strategic reserves or even for a home school feeding program. So one of the key factors of this massive cultural program is that there is guaranteed off-tick for the farmers. So because what we are trying to achieve is both creation of jobs, millions of jobs for the farmers. We are also trying to guarantee food security by trying to produce food but if you can't guarantee off-tick for the farmers then all of this might be lost. So we are also trying to guarantee off-tick for the farmers which is what we are, so it is difficult to say at this point because the program has just started. So we are in the various, the different parts of the country and I said in each what we are trying to bring into cultivation is almost between 20,000 and 100,000 hectares of new farmland in each state. Every state that is able to give us hectareage, we are happy to take it. For example, Plateau State has given us about 125,000 hectares. This is for the NLTP component of the program. So we are making progress. Okay, well export revenues are falling. Do we have high hopes in terms of agricultural exports? Do we have high hopes? Or are we looking at domestic consumption? You mean of the agricultural exports? Well we do have, you see first we are hoping that just satisfying the local market and that is huge. I mean the local market itself is huge. So we are hoping that we can become net exporters. We are the biggest producers of yam, of cassava practically in the world. And we will become the biggest rice producers in Africa at least. So we will, in my view, through this scheme become net exporters of several of these, of several of the produce that were, that at the moment were growing. I think there is very great opportunity for that. And then, you know, there are also other soybeans for instance, you know, we think we can do that, vegetables, agriculture. But you see the interesting thing, what I have found in the past few years is that the local market itself is so huge that even satisfying the local market for food is a major enterprise all by itself. So we expect that, you know, yes there will be significant, we will have significant export opportunities, you know, as we grow along. Okay, let me just briefly touch on housing. The Housing Stimulus Plan which talks about engaging young professionals and artisans. So that they form themselves into small and medium enterprises within the construction industry. And, you know, this highlights the use of indigenous labour and materials. There's also talk of, you know, using indigenous materials. This sounds great. How will this stop young materials from queuing up at the Canadian Embassy? Well, let me say that there are two different issues. One is that, as you know, people will always look for, I mean talent will seek the best rewards. And that's something you may not be able to do much about unless you create those opportunities for the best rewards for talent. But just to the point about the housing program, we have a target of 300,000 housing units for this plan. It's a huge target. But when you break it down, it means that each state will build something in the order of about 8,300 or so housing units in each of the 36 states. And that will come to, you know, maybe about just under 400 houses in each local government. Now, the whole idea, the whole idea is to engage young men and women who are builders, architects and all that, forming small companies that can take these housing units in lots. Right. So for example, you know, a group of a small company of builders will take 10 houses, build 10 houses in the state, build 20 houses and all of that. And what we expect to happen and what we have planned is that in each site, you would have block making going on there, you would have door manufacturing, you would have window manufacturing and all of that. So we're trying to ensure that it is local, local materials that are used, local labor, local materials and all of that. So that the engineers, builders, designers have something to do, the carpenters, artisans, et cetera, also have something to do in each of these sites. We're hoping that each of them... Right. Okay. Sorry, sir. I must have monopolized you. It's Patrick's turn to ask you two questions. All right. Thank you, Donem. Vice President, your bouncing back economic sustainability plan talks about helping local companies, particularly shielding them from the sort of pressures we've seen around the world in terms of credits, in terms of markets and the whole production process, but at the same time reorienting the country to boost local capacity, local production. I'm wondering since this plan was launched in May, what has been the outcome so far? What successes have you seen in this area? And do you have a message to reassure the many local business owners in Nigeria who are listening to this about how the government's going to help them? Okay. Let me say first that just a couple of days ago we launched what is called the Survival Fund. The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment launched the Survival Fund. Now the Survival Fund is payroll support for about 500,000 beneficiaries. And the plan is to take qualifying businesses, small businesses, who have a minimum of 10 employees and who will pay salaries of 10 employees of these small scale companies for three months. So we'll take up their payroll for three months, 10 of the employees for three months. Now we just opened the portal about two, three days ago and there's been massive response to that. So payroll support is one very important way that we intend to support small scale industry. We're also giving artisans and transporters grants of about 100,000 naira per artisan or per transporter. And that will cover about 333,000 such artisans and transporters. There's also a free business name registration that we're doing for 250,000 persons who wish to register their businesses. In total we're looking at about 1.3 million beneficiaries under the Survival Fund and under the MSME grants to the artisans and transporters grants. Then we also have a guaranteed off-take scheme. The guaranteed off-take scheme basically is, government says if you manufacture face masks, if you manufacture sanitizers, and certain types of food, certain types of food products, we will buy from you, we will take that food off you. There's guaranteed off-take and this is for about 300,000 of such producers of food. Both schemes all together will benefit about 1.7 million small businesses and individuals. Now I want you to look at it in terms of the overall numbers. We know that this isn't going to, it's not going to dramatically, it's not going to make a dramatic change. But what we're hoping to do is that in aggregate, we look at what we're trying to do in making solar connections, in housing, in agriculture and all that, the support we're giving. And then we're also, the central bank is also supporting, we're hoping to be able to get support for aviation, support for hospitality, the hospitality industry. I mean, these industries have suffered tremendously. Hospitality, for example, some of the biggest hotels have had under 10% occupancy, especially in the past four or five months. So we want to give them some support. But we're also restructuring their loans. We're granting moratoriums of their loans for a year, so they may not have to pay. In fact, that's, if you have a loan, for instance, from the bank of industry, or a direct intervention on the CBN, you already have a one-year moratorium. And we're trying to get the same moratorium for many businesses who have commercial loans so that they can go off for one year without having to pay any loans, just to ease their cash flows and all that. So these are some of what we're trying to achieve. Thank you, Vice President. I wanted to ask about the revenue situation, because you said to us how you're planning to finance the bounce back program itself. But then there's the matter of just running the country as well, using the budget-free revenue to finance the health, education, social investment infrastructure and so on. Now, it was the target of your government to get up to non-oil revenue, I think up to 15% of the country's gross domestic product. And since your party came to power in 2015, they've made incremental progress on that. But I think the last available figures were for 2018 and it was around 8.7%. I guess what a lot of people are concerned about right now is to what extent the government is not going to reach those revenue targets. What's the fallback plan? If the non-oil revenue falls short and looking at the oil market at the moment, although it's improved from earlier in the year, it's still pretty fragile. What's the plan on revenues, please? Okay, thank you. First, let me say that all our plans for revenue, of course, have been hit very badly by the pandemic and the fallouts of the pandemic. So there's no question at all that we are way behind in terms of revenue targets. We've seen a drop of almost just slightly over 60% of revenues. So it's a major hit. There's no question at all that it's very difficult to meet revenue objectives. And just by the fact also that all prices at least have so stabilized somewhat. But the problem we have is with fairly low production and very low uptake of oil, of cargo. And the simple reason why that is the case is because many of the world's economies are not opening up yet. I mean, we, for instance, one of the major consumers of our oil, one of our major customers for oil is India. India, as you know, has its grappling with the pandemic. Its factories are opening up quite slowly. So we naturally have a problem with offtake of our oil. So revenues are really low. And we had ramped up, you know, our tax to GDP was somewhere around 6%. We ramped that up to about 8% as of last year. But with what we're seeing now, obviously it's even more difficult for people to pay taxes than ever before. I mean, given the state of affairs. But this is why we're doing everything that we're doing. Namely, trying to ensure that businesses survive this period by providing as much support as we can. By relieving them of as much burden as possible. Especially by way of their loans, ensuring that they're able to get some moratorium and some allowance so that they can at least continue to run their businesses. And by all the other interventions and support that we're giving, we hope that those interventions will help businesses. Our approach is first to ensure that we save jobs. If we save jobs, if we save businesses, if that works and then we do the best we can in agriculture, do the best we can through the housing schemes and all of that. We will actually be able to improve spending. And if we're able to improve spending, if we're able to improve money in the hands of people, taxes will definitely improve. If businesses survive, taxes will improve. So those are the sort of projections that we have. But there's no question at all that in terms of our finances, we're going through possibly the most difficult period in our recent history. So Vice President, can Nigerian businesses and particularly the wealthy individuals expect at some point to pay higher taxes? Or is the government on the other side of the argument that putting up taxes now would actually be counterproductive because it would slow the country's recovery from the pandemic induced recession? Yeah, our position really is that this is hardly the time to raise taxes. As a matter of fact, the way that we've looked at it is that as much as possible, we should be looking at how to reduce the burden. Rather than increase the burden, we think that companies that are already within the net who are paying their taxes should just be left alone to prosper. And as things improve, I'm sure that our own financial flows will improve. But we're certainly not looking at increasing taxes at all. As a matter of fact, all of what we're looking at now is how to ensure that the environment makes sense for badly hit supply chains, badly hit businesses. As I've said, several businesses have huge problems just trying to stay alive. So a tax increase just wouldn't make sense at this point. By the present, I wanted to follow up then on this issue of public finance with the question about the recent cut to the subsidy on fuel in Nigeria and the move to a more market driven tariff for electricity provision. Are those moves out of financial necessity or does it mark a shift in government thinking towards using more tools of market economics to run the economy and trying to make fuel distribution and electricity provision more commercially viable and more successful? Okay. Thank you. Let me say first that we've had, as I said, a severe downturn in our finances. So at 60% less revenue in a position where sustaining fuel subsidies is practically impossible, simply because we do not have the resources. Now, and so as of March 18, 2020 was when we effectively deregulated. When all prices at that time were very low, and pump price was about 125 Naira. And I'll just explain what the subsidies cost. In 2018, we paid $722 billion in subsidies. And in 2019, we paid $546 billion in subsidies. Today, our entire budgetary package for the economic sustainability plan, in other words cash that we can make available in budget is $500 billion. So that tells you what the difficulties are. So we want to do a sustainability plan to be able to ensure that businesses survive, to be able to ensure that we're able to continue to provide services, pay salaries, etc. All we have is $500 billion for the budget, that's what I'm saying, for the economic sustainability plan. But in 2018, we paid $546 billion in subsidies, previously $722 billion. Now with 60% less revenue, we just don't have the money. That's the honest truth. We simply don't have the money. And the reason why I say that's the honest truth is because I'm trying to emphasize that it is both for us an absolute necessity and at the same time an economic approach to solving a problem. So what are we doing? We've decided then that look, we've got to focus on CNG, uncompressed natural gas. CNG is about half the price of petrol today. So if we use CNG for cars and for buses, it will cost about between 78 and 80 Naira or so per litre, you know, for CNG. And we're thinking that if we convert cars, of course, government will bear the cost of the conversion of cars and buses so that they can use both CNG and PMS and petrol, we'll be able to bring down the cost so that the average person, transporter, individual who owns a car, will be able to get energy, will be able to power their cars and all of that at half, at about half the cost that they are paying currently today. Now, just to give an example, Dangote, who has a large fleet of trucks, has already converted to CNG. There's almost 5,000 trucks. So he's able to use PMS and CNG. We already have an experiment going on in Edo state also about converting cars and all of that. All of India use CNG. India doesn't even have petrol or gas, but they use, they import gas and use CNG. So we think that this is the way to go for us. We think that expensive petrol subsidies cannot even be sustained because we simply don't have the resources to do so. So that's part of the strategy that we adopted. Now, in the case of electricity, what we're trying to do is to ensure that we're able to, as you know, the electricity industry is privatised except for transmission. But what we've seen is that the discourse is at the distribution companies. I'm just not able to meet their targets or to even provide electricity on any kind of stable basis. Now, we have at various times, at this point we have at least close to 11,000 megawatts of power, you know, installed capacity of something close to 13,000 megawatts of power. But we're able to dispatch about 4,000. We have the capacity to do about 5,000, but even part of that is rejected. Why? The discourse would say, well, we can't sell, we can't sell this, but you know, there's no, and in many cases, and this is the fault of many of them, there's no metering. So, you know, naturally, people resist the estimated billings and all of that. So what we've tried to do is to say, look, and they've been hankering all these years for estimated cost-reflective tariffs, government has been paying again the subsidy. In fact, so far in the past two years, we've spent about 1.3 trillion on subsidies for electricity. Again, here's a situation where that's completely unaffordable. But what we decided to do is to say, look, if you use, if the discourse is able to supply 12 hours or more of power, then you would pay the cost-reflective tariff. So it's based entirely on service. But we're saying that the vast majority of our people, people who are underserved to use less than 12 hours of power will not experience any type of increases or any cost-reflective tariff at all, which is the vast majority of our people anyway, about 75%. But we are hoping that this will lead to a situation where we are compelling the discourse to improve supply, to ensure that they actually make, to actually provide more than 12 hours of power. In many cases, we are saying that you cannot hike unless you are providing, you know, between 12 and 24 hours of power. Now, part of the problems we've experienced is that the discourse have not provided the investment for metering, right? And so the President ordered that there must be mass metering before, that there will be no estimated billing, except if, what we have now is a capping. In other words, you cannot pay anything beyond what your neighbors are paying if you don't have a meter. So we're rolling out about 5 million new meters now, and we're hoping that, you know, the vast majority of customers of the discourse will have meters. But more importantly, we want to ensure that new discos, new companies come into the market, so that we decentralize completely the power sector. So that new companies can come and, you know, sell power, produce power, and sell power, and nobody can maintain an absolute monopoly. Because we think that if we're decentralizing this way, several parts of our country can, you know, have micro-breeds and small-breeds and all of that. And more power can come into the equation. Today we have a national grid that's able to do about 5,000 megawatts of power. But if we have several different micro-breeds across the country, and our solar effort as well, because we're doing 5 million solar connections as part of the economic sustainability plan, we think that we can electrify our country within a short period of time, but we must break the monopolies that we have at the moment. We must break the monopolies. If we don't break those monopolies and enable other players to come into the market, take territory and produce power and supply power, then we won't be able to solve our problems. So these are, you know, some of the issues around PMS and the electricity market. Thank you very much, Patrick. Thank you, Your Excellency, for giving me this opportunity to give you a very quick brief about Channel VAS. So I'm actually in Nigeria, and I was born in Nigeria and grew up there all my life, and I'm proud to say I started Channel VAS in Nigeria, and it's become the largest fintech company in the world and the most profitable one. We are in 40 countries today. So we're a great example for many other companies that could actually start in Nigeria. We started kind of in the good days, well before the pandemic and the drop in oil prices and so on. But one of the big concerns I have, and we have now international investors on our board, and we want to invest more money in Nigeria. The biggest concern the investors have today is how do we take our money out? The system simply does not provide us with foreign currency anymore. Foreign currency is being preserved for key raw materials. A lot of other materials have been banned from importation. Knowing Nigeria is an import country, even though it's on its trajectory to hopefully become self-independent. The key issue still remains. How is the problem of foreign exchange going to be addressed once and for all? And how does the government plan to merge the dual exchange rate, meaning the parallel market and the official rate, so that investors can have that certainty? Meaning are you going to borrow more money to pump more dollars into the market, or how is this going to be added? Because this is a key and fundamental problem for future investments. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Basim. I think that first, as you know, this is a central bank function. So I would have to talk about it just in broad terms, because they are fiscal and monetary type conversations. And I will not of course be able to say that the central bank must do X and Y. We have an autonomous central bank. But let me say that first we are all very concerned about the challenges that investors have, not just foreign direct investments such as yourself, but also portfolio investors who have had some difficulty taking out their money. We experienced the same problems during the recession in 2016-2017, but we were able to get out of it and we were able to resolve most of the issues around that period. And we think that we will by and large resolve these issues also. Our conversations with the central bank are generally to the effect that we are looking at all the possible options for ensuring greater liquidity in the foreign exchange market, especially the I&E window, we are looking at all the possible options. And there is nothing that is off the table in terms of ensuring that we show up our reserves and that we have adequate foreign exchange to ensure that the market runs. I think the general agreement is that we must move more towards market in our foreign exchange sector. And this also means that the merger, this also means that the merger of the exchange rates, the dual exchange rate is without a doubt something on the cards. The central bank has chosen to take a gradualist approach to that merger, but we expect that that will be ramped up quite quickly. We all have concerns, especially those of us at the fiscal side, we have concerns about ensuring that the foreign exchange market is more market driven. And that we give more room. And we think that if market is allowed to play more of a role, we think that foreign exchange will come in. We think that there are several investors that might be waiting on the wings, waiting to see a much more certain and much more market driven exchange rates. We see that. The dollars will come in. We don't think that it's just a matter of acquiring dollars from somewhere. We think that the very logic of markets is that if we open it up, the dollars will come in. If you recall in 2016-2017, once we opened the eye on new window and allowed a bit of market, we found a boost. And this is what we especially on the fiscal side think should happen. And we are very hopeful that that will be the approach that the central bank will take. Thank you so much Vice President. I'm going to try to push these questions into groups. We've got so many. You know, yesterday evening we had over 150 questions, even more come in since you started speaking today. The first bunch of questions are about, I guess broadly, the economic nationalist question. And Idi Nazoufi, who is an educator, asks about the policy of the Nigeria closing its borders as of last August, well before the pandemic. And we have a program, a question from Handan Borgi of the World Food Programme in Addis Ababa. Again, asking how Nigeria's approach to border closure fits in with the imperatives of the African Continental Free Trade Area. And a very specific question from Dr. Seidu Sacco of ECOWAS who asks you, when will Nigeria reopen its borders? Can you give us a sense of the government's thinking on these questions? And if possible, a timeline? Well, let me say first that the reasons why we closed our borders at the time we did were two main reasons. The first was that we were trying to control the avalanche of smuggled light arms and ammunition into the country. Which, as you know, is a major security concern for us. Especially as we contend with insurgency in the Northeast, some banditry in the Northwest and some of the insecurity problems that we had. So the smuggling of light arms and ammunition is one. Secondly, of course, you probably also appreciate that we found that producers in priority sectors like rice and poultry were struggling to cope with smuggled products dumped in our market using our land borders as entry points. As a matter of fact, as some of our neighbors, we had to contend with some of our neighbors actually being used as almost a staging post for bringing in rice and poultry and other smuggled products into Nigeria. So what we've done then, and we're working with our neighbors to see how, on what terms we will reopen those borders, we are at the moment undertaking joint border patrols. And these joint border patrols are at an experimental stage. And this is a positive signal. We expect a lot of progress on this matter. We got all of our neighbors to understand that aside from the fact that smuggling of arms and ammunition and these products is existential for us economically and security-wise, we had to get their buy-in and cooperation to working with us to ensure that we're able to control smuggling along the borders. So we think that these joint patrols are working, and I'm sure that soon enough we should have the borders open. Regarding the question of how this works with the free trade, I think that we're committed to the free trade agreements. And we are negotiating all of the various aspects that require negotiation. But I want to say that we are also concerned about threats to security and threats to the economy. And we have to take certain action sometimes, which may, which of course may not necessarily be in the overall interests of everyone, but at least would satisfy the immediate requirements and immediate needs of our country. We have to have a country that will survive in order to be able to negotiate and deal with other countries in our region. So I think that that's our reason for the border closures, but it certainly isn't meant to be permanent and we are looking forward to reopening as quickly as possible. Thank you, Vice President. I want to ask another question about national finances. We've got a question from Nimmi Prince Willill of the People's Gazette here or there in Abuja, who wants to know why were there no moves in the plan to cut the salaries of Nigeria's lawmakers, whom he says are some of the highest paid in the world. And secondly, a question from Alex Onyekou, an accountant in Nigeria who is worried about the inflation rate. We've all talked about fuel and electricity prices. It's currently he says about 13%. Are there specific measures in your plan on more generally to keep the inflation rate under control? I know you've just cut the interest rates or the central bank has just cut the interest rates. Could you respond to that, please? Yes. Okay. First, let me just address the questions around national finances. The plan, the economic sustainability plan, could not of course recommend salary cuts because salary cuts, as you know, are done by recommendations from the Revenue, Physical and Mobilization Committee. There's a whole process for doing that. And so while voluntary salary cuts as was done by the House of Representatives may be done in order to do so in any meaningful way and effectively, you have to go through the Revenue, Physical, Mobilization Commission to do so. Now that's on the one hand, but the other point is that we also strongly believe that we must ensure that we rationalize government spending in various ways. And this is why we've done several different rationalizations in the new budget. You'll probably see that there's quite a few recurrent expenditures have been cut down. Several in so many important respects we've rationalized such that, as it were, bare bones in terms of any expenditure that we think may not be appropriate at this time. But going to the questions of inflation, what we experience in some senses, there are those who will say that this is cost push inflation because, again, we've seen a rise in the exchange rates, the value of the Naira and all of that. So a considerable number of imported items, of course, have gone up and we import quite a few things, including some food items. And we've also had some, because of the disruptions in the supply chain over the COVID period, that has also led to prices going up. So what you've found is that in many cases, prices went up or wasn't prices, the inflation has moved up in the past two, three months. And that is in the period when these severe disruptions took place. We think that as the supply chains opened up, as we ramp up food production and as we bring back more of our businesses and all of that, we think that we might be able to bring down inflation somewhat. But again, as the economists will say, we may have to allow some bit of inflation in order to be able to increase consumer spending in order to put money in the hands of people when we have to just tolerate some inflation. But we're working very hard to ensure that we don't wipe out money in people's hands by the inflationary trends. And we think that with increased supply of goods and with the disruptions corrected with food production going up, we think that we might be able to do much more and improve inflation more.