 భాలాల్మివిింద్నాకెత్దటికెడినంకెకాల్దెనినిల్దా. త్టివినికిక్సపార్మనోమికంమర్టంటియానిరామికనషాలిడినిరాలాధరన్. The President of Latin Humbu has said that his government is not blind to the challenges several Nigerians are facing in the financial markets. He has laid the concerns of the business community, assuring them that crucial plans are on the way to improve foreign exchange liquidity. While speaking of the 29th National Economic Summit Group meeting yesterday, the President said his administration will honour every legitimate contract with respect to the nation's foreign exchange obligations and also revealed that his government has a good line of sight for the additional foreign exchange liquidity that is required to restore market confidence. Joining me to discuss this and dissect the President's address is Dr. Mooda Yusuf, Director, CEO Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, CPPE and Paul Allajé, Chief Economist, SPM Professionals. Gentlemen, welcome to PLUS Politics. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having us. Thank you very much for the privilege of guesting on the show. Gentlemen, let me start with Mr. Mooda Yusuf. To a layman like me who only sees the reality of the marketplace in the last four months, the Naira seems to have lost more than 50 percent of everyday items. Consumables are shooting into the status first. Initially, most of you, people who are somewhat manageable about economics were praising the President on some of the measures he took when he landed in office, the removal of subsidy, the unification, supposed unification of the forex markets. So Mr. Yusuf, what would be your response to the confusion of an average or the settlement of an average person like me? All the steps that the President has taken so far, especially in the first one or two months of his administration, were steps that were meant to effect corrections in the economy. I would like to call it corrective reforms because if you have continued on that trajectory the consequences will be very, very profound. When you are taking steps to correct things that have gone wrong, it's like undertaking a surgery on a patient. This has naturally come with a lot of discomfort and I'm happy that the President retreated when he was addressing the economic summit book that he is aware of the pains and the challenges that these things have inflicted on Nigerians. So the influence were inevitable. We have been doing at a better time perhaps now because for these kind of things there is no perfect time to do them. The earlier the steps were taken, the better. What I can say was missing was the speed of response to mitigate the pains of the reforms. If you undertake a surgery, the surgery were arranged for anesthesia. After the surgery we are arranged for 10 relievers and all of that. The same thing ought to have happened especially with pre-sociation. I had expected a much faster response in terms of relief measures that would trickle down to the entire citizen that unfortunately did not happen. Right now the President is grappling with or the administration is grappling with how to actually deliver palliatives that should be inclusive in nature. But as to whether we needed those reforms, here they are in everything. They are things that we need to do if we must have an economy that is sustaining. And I want to believe that these challenges are transitional challenges. I believe that with time this will face a lot. And I like the confidence that the President about clear indications or pathways on how to resolve this problem particularly this foreign exchange crisis. So I just pray that those pronouncements are not based on assumptions that cannot stack. I pray that they come to materialize. If that happens they will be on the way to get him out of this crisis. Mr. Alage one would have thought that for somebody who was resolved who was determined to take such dramatic measures as inevitable as Mr. Yusuf has painted those measures one would have thought that scenarios would have been played with prior to the enactment of the policies. It does seem at this juncture to an average Nigerian that we are just left in the lodge. We are just left in the middle of the ocean. We see everything sinking. It does seem that the Naira is a daily sinking. So how would you want to address an average Nigerian listening to an expert like Yusuf now? Thank you so very much for having me once again. I had mentioned between March and April today it is not just subsidy that is removed we have also seen flotation in an economy that 40% of the effects depends on the importation of PMS the raw material of which we have in our country. As a result when you don't bother about economic outcomes economic impact in most cases negative we catch up with most developing countries it was clear that Nigeria needed to take a decision regarding doing something about subsidy but what we must do first is to ensure that we control our own destiny as I speak with you today that destiny is still not controlled we are not able to manage the supply side we have done everything possible to manage the demand side we are looking at how to boost to curtail demand or slow down the rate of acceleration of the demand but what we have not done is how do we manage the supply side I understand some of the comments and the pronunciation that has been made by Mr President but you know it is important for us to keep up a life for many Nigerians but many are wondering how will this thing be which of course he said in the only book how will this thing be we are not saying it is not impossible because of course government is government but how do we create that monitoring system such that we can take decision for those who don't mean well for our nation those who just want to owe dollars because of issues of confidence on the local currency unfortunately if we all say we don't have confidence in Naira if we continue to owe the economy and we will be committing the same stripping slope error it is falling today let me quickly go and change all my money to dollars the more we all rush to change to dollars the more the value we go down until we are able to put a stop now the big element in the room is at what point will government put a stop what are we going to do and I just tell you and I've thought so many correspondents around our country and around the world the permanent solution to challenges of effects is not just to talk to the demand side we must have a viable supply and that supply is not seen as are today and I'm hoping that the authorities of our country will start seeing the importance of amplifying supply and curtailing demand to a large extent Mr Yusuf the president yesterday said he had a trick obviously on how to get 10 billion US dollars injected into the economy which ordinarily to anybody who follows the basic economics you know that would may have to curtail the stampede that is ongoing now but beyond that I want you to talk to that but beyond that what can a very twittered mind like you suggest to curtail the seeming that is desirable in how the government seems to be conducting itself on matters of the economy Mr Yusuf first I was impressed by the optimism of the president and that was further enforced by the pronouncements of the finance minister as to their strategy to be able to mobilize external resources to be able to deal with the current crisis of confidence because at the heart of all of this challenge is the collapse of confidence most confidence collapses in any system there is no more to be panic there is also no more to have people become anxious a lot of anxiety panic buying and all manner of issue and the good thing about the post of the president and his economy team is that they have prioritized the resolution of this crisis because just as my colleague said foreign exchange is at the heart of so many times in the economy unfortunately and very unfortunately the economy is excessively important especially for energy products and many of that is of course so that is why the economy is highly sensitive to developments around the foreign exchange so to the extent that the government has promised and you are very specific about timelines so they have also put themselves at least for people to monitor to see what exactly and how quickly these promises will materialize that is something for me that is positive on the assumption that it eventually materializes I'm also very very impressed by the fact that the administration is ready to partner with the private sector and that stakeholders in resolving this issue they are not claiming to know everything and the central bank governor said that much even before now that there is going to be both stakeholder engagements going forward now as to the challenges of the average naive because the ordinary people listen to us వరిికిందికిథోనినిక నిందింది చాబికికినా మలాకియౕ మల్పెని. తినేస్డి. మహరిసానేస్లినికి వరితూదితికారికి. ⋯n bunlar fee  tiế n షి ని కి ాయామి epile�ి × పఠిమం  cod పమ� Warner E ఌਹ � sleeve ఆర నిetaan work the macroeconomic issues. I need to see some responses with respect to agriculture specifically. Agriculture and food security. Apart from the generic things that we do, because it's an emergency. We go out there, the level of hunger is unimaginable. So beyond what the government is doing about foreign exchange and the rest, we need to do something quickly about the issue of food. And we need to place stakeholders to the table. Those who are in primary production, those who are in processing, those who are in packaging marketing, let us bring them to the table and let them look at who is, as to how can bring down the cost of food. You can put import duty options. You can put trade policy options. You can put fiscal policy options. You can put tax policy options to crash the price of food. The same thing with transportation. Transportation is a big issue. Especially in an economy where we don't have effective public transportation system that is driven by government. It's a very big issue. Whether you are a manager or a messenger, the bus conductor doesn't want to know. You have paid the same amount and it's extremely, extremely difficult. There are lots of people who are not tracking necessarily. These are things that I think require immediate response, sector-specific response in a way that will trickle down and in a way that will be inclusive. But are you at this juncture perceiving or seeing any distinctive measure aimed at the sectors relevant to ameliorate the condition? Are you seeing measures being taken specific to these sectors that you have itemized? No, I haven't seen much of it. I must confess. And that is... What we have seen so far are the latest distribution of items, cash transfers and so on. But given the anonymity of the challenge and given the number of people, given the number of Nigerians involved in this, we are talking about over 100 million people. Cash transfers cannot address that. The distribution of palletives, may be maize or graze or rice cannot address that. Let me quickly go to your colleague now. Mr. Laje, in the backdrop of all the central bank of Nigeria, removed the listing from Forex market or legitimate forest market or the licensed forest market of 43 items that have been put on no listing list before. A number of manufacturers have been quoted to have said that that measure is inimical to their productivity. So how would you want to reflect on some of the things we touched on before on that issue? The resolution of the 43 items that were before now banned by the central bank from assessing effects is not to the fact that the commodity importation was banned by itself. Apart from a few lists that was of course on the immigration list that could not come to Nigeria. Some other things could find their way to Nigeria provided they can go to the pallet market to finance using pallet market or whatever source, you know non-valid. Once they can bring it in, it was fine. So authority in my opinion thought that these 43 items were the things driving the pallet market to become more potent. And I have mentioned time and again that nearly 60% of the pressure you are seeing in pallet market today is not because of 43 items. It is not even because of manufacturers that want to bring in raw material. It is largely because of confidence. People don't believe that their Naira is not going to get weaker tomorrow. They therefore resorted to going to pallet market because they feel one of the important characteristics of money which of course is durability and one of the function of money is store of value. They now feel that if this time last month the official rate of Naira was 700, today it was an 800 at official window. At pallet market it was 900. Today it was 1,200. The question is if they want to buy commodity. Let's take a cell for instance. We are using phone. I am using phone to communicate with you to have this interview. When I want to buy another phone, the inflation figure as well as S&G devaluation will reflect on phone. Do you know that if I want to buy corn that is not even imported. The pressure of inflation and S&G will also reflect. You may ask me why. Because the consular lives in the same economy that have been faced with economic achieve. And he also needs to buy food. He needs to exchange what is any for other things. So if inflation has occurred on his rent, inflation has occurred on transport and so many other things, he will also increase the price of his source of livelihood. And this is an economic go round. Unfortunately, unfortunately, 43 items as suggested by the central bank is to reduce the price on pallet market demand and underline demand. We have still not solved the real problem. I want the real problem. Supply, supply and supply. And I don't know if we have time. We mentioned it on several platforms. What should we be doing? How should we address supply concerns? Mr. Laje, I can bet we will bring you back for the suggestion of the supply on the supply side. We want to say thank you Mr. Laje. Mr. Yusuf, you want to give us the equation word please. What's that? Mr. Yusuf. Okay. Okay, then we have to sign up. Sign up at this juncture. Thank you gentlemen for guesting on the show. We go on a short break and when we are back, we take on the next topic.