Don Gives Panacea For Rising Inflation Rate

A university lecturer, Dr.
Onyekwere Eze, has urged Nigerians to have a change of approach and develop appetite for locally-made products so as to curb  the rate of inflation in the country.
He said that Nigerian government should encourage local refining of petroleum products in order to reduce the amount of foreign exchange spent on fuel subsidy.
Eze who disclosed this to The Tide, recently while reacting to the latest price index published by the National Bureau of Statistics  (NBS) which put inflation rate at 9.2 per cent in June, said  there was quite a lot that  could be done to redirect  the economy in the right direction.
According to him, if Nigerians should start buying locally made product, it would curtail the high demand for foreign currencies and reverse the high inflation trend facing the nation.
Eze, a lecturer of economics at Federal University, Wukari in Taraba State on his return to Port Harcourt also disclosed that the NBS report measured the average charge over time in prices of goods and services consumed by people for day-to-day  living.
“The NBS report  stated that the CPI, measured inflation, rose by 9.2 per cent year-on-year, and 0.2 per cent from the 9.0 per cent recorded in May.
“I understand it is up to 30 per cent of our foreign exchange that is going to the importation of refined petroleum products, so there is quite a lot we can do to re-engineer the country’s economy,”  he said.
Eze also said that the crash in the price of crude oil, had taken its toll on the economy, since Nigeria is an import dependent and  mono-product  economy.

Corlins Walter