Effective Monetary Policy, Crucial To ERGP-Analyst

A financial expert, Mr Atiku Samuel, says effective monetary policy is crucial to drive growth projected in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) of the Federal Government.
Samuel, a Lead Researcher, with BudgIT, Lagos said this in an interview with newsmen in Lagos, yesterday.
ERGP projects that Nigeria will make significant progress to achieve structural economic change with a more diversified and inclusive economy in five key areas by 2020.
The key areas are; stable macro-economic environment, agricultural transformation, food security, sufficiency in energy and improved transportation infrastructure.
Samuel also said effective alignment of fiscal and monetary policy would actualise economic restoration, improve inclusive growth and build a globally competitive economy.
“We have an economy as big as Nigeria, N50 billion come into the economy every year and within Nigeria we have N20 trillion in circulations.
“Incidentally, the dollar inflow has reduced, instead of 50 billion dollars that we were used to, we are now getting 40 billion dollars inflow.
“What do you think happens to the Naira, the Naira tends to collapse, which is what we are experiencing now.
“It is a clear cut poorly managed monetary system that needs to change to set the economy on the path of growth,” he said.
Samuel further said the banking system needed urgent reform, adding that 50 entities accounted for 38 per cent of debt with the financial institutions.
“We have about 90 million bank accounts in Nigeria but less than 300, 000 account holders have access to loan.
‘’That is not the best way to build an economy.
“We have to democratise the financial institution so that we are not reliant on the success or failure of 50 entities to avoid monopoly, nepotism and collapse of the banking system”.
According to him, to democratise the banking system, mechanism should be evolved to ensure that more people have access to loans ranging from mortgage loan to consumer credit loan.
He further urged the government to ensure constant engagement with citizens for feedback on its programmes before formulating them into policies to achieve inclusive growth.