The Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, says the Federal Government is seeking to boost liquidity in the nation’s capital market through savings.
Ahmed, while speaking during a meeting with members of the Capital Market Master Plan Implementation Council in Abuja, said that the Federal Government was willing to set up a National Savings Committee that would make recommendations to the government on the best ways to mobilise savings that would lead to economic growth.
She stated that there was a need for Nigerians to imbibe the culture of saving so as to be able to participate actively in the capital market as a means of growing the economy.
She said, “We need to grow domestic investments that will be here to stay, not just people that are shopping around for where to make profit alone. It is true that the current financial system is still tilted largely toward the banks.
“There is a need to look at all the players and help solve the problems. We are open to setting up the working group so we can have a review, extract recommendations and get to work. Those that can be done immediately, we will try to do them and the long term ones, we can then plan to do them as we move along.”
Ahmed revealed that the government was concerned about the volatility of the capital market and was ready to work with CAMMIC to ensure stability in the market.
She said the government recognised the need for foreign investors in the capital market, and most importantly, the need to grow domestic investors that would stay.
“The foreign investors come in and when anything happens, they quickly take their money and go away but our domestic investors will always be here with us.”
“We have worked assiduously to diversify from our overdependence on oil and gas and the first sector the President is interested in is in the agricultural sector.
“We know that we have not yet addressed the whole value chain and this can be driven if we have a very active commodities exchange market because our goods will be of high standards as required by industries in Nigeria and outside the country,” she said.
The Chairman, CAMMIC, Mr Olutola Mobolurin, expressed the need for the government to pay more attention to the capital market, being the centre of the economy.