Experts Hinge Economic Recovery on Policy Implementation

• Experts Hinge Economic Recovery on Policy Implementation

Nigerians have been urged to put governments at all strata to task to enunciating the right policies as well as their implementation in order to restore confidence in the nation’s economy.

It has been argued that economic decisions must be approached rationally and not emotionally, as the wrong policies only cause the citizens to suffer.

Experts, who gathered at the inaugural summit organised by The Liberal Forum, (TLF) in conjunction with Nigerian Economics Student’s Association (NESA) resolved that a holistic alternative economic plan and noble implementation approaches, are the panacea for evolving a greater economic development that would lift the poor from the present economic predicament.

In his keynote address titled, “Who finance don epp: foreign exchange, interest rates, inflation and Nigerians welfare,” Chief Executive Officer, RTC Advisory Services Ltd, Opeyemi Agbaje, said the Nigerian political, economic, and social system rather than helping the citizenry, impoverished them the more.

Agbaje identified the institutional problems bedevilling the country to include wrong budgeting priorities, where the national budget for a long time had hovered around 70 per cent on recurrent expenditure alone and earnings from crude oil wrongly spent.

He said that such budgets have also been premised on the wrong financial systems, which leave the population at the mercy of the commercial banks and a gross neglect of investments in viable sectors like agriculture and manufacturing.

Also, deficiencies in social services such as education and public health services as well as poor policies and implementation failures are contributory factors to the deplorable state Nigeria has been plunged in.

According to Agbaje, “If only we had acted like a rational economy, things would have panned out differently. We must approach economic policies rationally and not emotionally. Our GDP needs further optimisation; government must address the issue of downstream petroleum sector; and reform its budget to concentrate on capital expenditure.

“The federal government must continue to tackle corruption redefining the nation’s primary national security imperative as the abolition of corruption, which in any event, is what the constitution stipulates. Our leaders must find the political will to fight corruption whether by its friends or foes,” Agbaje said.

The Director General, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI, Muda Yusuf, who was represented by Director, Research and Advocacy, Dr. Vincent Nwani, identified high interest rates as a factor affecting businesses negatively in the country.

Nwani called on government to always make policies that will create jobs and better the lives of Nigerians.