CBN’s ‘unconventional’ economic interventions unsustainable – Experts

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s unconventional interventions like Anchor Borrowers Programme cannot be sustained, economic experts have said.

They spoke at the Economic and Business Strategies’ 6th quarterly Refined Economic Development (RED) lecture entitled, “The role of monetary policy in a slow growth economy” in Abuja on Saturday.

Unless the CBN changes it strategy, the country will continue to witness slow economic growth, according to the experts who spoke as panellists at the event.

An Abuja-based financial inclusion specialist, Mr Tiko Okoye said the CBN’s efforts at stabilising the foreign exchange and controlling inflation will come to nought if the production sector of the economy is neglected.

“No matter the amount of monetary policy the CBN applies to control inflation, it will not work without growing the real sector”, Okoye said.

He called for the decimalisation of the country’s currency to make it stronger and stable.

Similarly, a lecturer at University of Abuja, Prof Mutiullah Olasupo, said the CBN should increase its intervention on the production sector of the economy.

He also urged the Federal Government to sustain the border closure to regulate what comes in and what goes out of the country.

Speaking on the CBN’s Anchor Borrowers Programme, another lecturer at the University of Abuja, Prof Akeem Oyerinde, said the programme was only benefiting “portfolio farmers” who weren’t adding any value to the economy.

But a former Economic Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo, Prof Magnus Kpakol, said the CBN’s policies helped the country out of recession, and they could be sustained.

Prof Kpakol, who is the Chairman of EBS, said if not for the “unconventional” approaches taken by the CBN, the Nigeria’s economy would have gone into a terrible mess two years ago.

He said the FG should work in correcting the country’s human capital deficiency.