In another boost to the Nigerian economy, the board of the African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved the sum of $600 million to support the Nigerian economy.
This was revealed by the President of AfDB, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, monday while fielding questions from journalists at the 11th African Economic Conference in Abuja.
Adesina said: “As far as the AfDB is concerned, we had said that we are going to consider a billion dollars to support Nigeria when I visited the president and already that has gone to the board and $600 million has been approved by our board just a month ago for Nigeria to support its economic governance.
“The $600 million is going to help in many ways to stabilise the naira. It is also going to help the government to support the very much needed reforms in the agricultural sector in terms of different agricultural policy reforms and also in the energy sector that is very fundamental to how you grow the economy and come out of recession.”
On how Nigeria will emerge from its current recession, he said the AfDB would provide support to the private sector, adding that the “Bank continues to make significant amounts of support in the private sector, they are investing in banks, we are giving them quite a lot of financial support trying to keep them afloat in this very tough period”.
He added that Nigeria had taken some tough policy decisions, stating: “I think the government has taken some tough policy decisions with the removal of subsidy on petrol and the naira was also allowed to devalue.”
He observed, however, that there was still a problem with regard to the foreign exchange market.
“There are still a number of issues to be sorted out. We have got to have the monetary policy and the fiscal policy regime sorted out so as to be able to stabilise the naira and provide sufficient amount of access to foreign exchange for those that want to bring in machinery equipment or materials,” he said.
Adesina was optimistic, nonetheless that as these policy instruments are sorted out, Nigeria would be in a good position to significantly attract some amount of foreign direct investment, which it needs.