The Director General, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Mr Muda Lawal on Thursday highlighted various aspects of the economy that have been affected both positively and negatively since the turn of the second quarter of the year.
Speaking on Channels Television’s business programme, Business Morning, he said that economic performance assessment depends on the perspective at which one is looking at it, noting that “there are macroeconomics, which has to do with a lot of exchange rates, inflation, foreign reserves and global developments as well.
“There are policy issues, which came up during the second quarter, things like the automotive policy, pronouncements on the cashless policy, the new guidelines for Bureau de Change, the privatisation of the Bank of Industry and Bank of Agriculture, which is a major issue for us, the pending Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and the budget that was signed very late.”
Mr Lawal, giving a rundown of institutional issues that affected the economy, further listed issues like the “cargo clearing at the ports, the Pre Assessment Report (PAR) that is issued by the Nigeria Customs Service, issues of logistics, particularly by small businesses” as “major issues affecting virtually almost every business in the country” adding that above all “we have security issues”.
While noting that all the aforementioned have impacted on the economy in different ways, Mr Lawal noted that some macroeconomics variables were favourable as they trended during the 2nd quarter, adding that “the exchange rate, particularly in the official market, is still stable relatively, and that has given some level of comfort to investors.
“In the Inter-bank and the parallel markets, there was even a slight appreciation between what we had in the first quarter and the second.
Mr Lawal, however, berated what he said was a gap that exists between the official exchange rates and what is obtainable in the Bureau de Change, noting that “that in itself is an indication of a kind of a distortion in the market”. He warned that “it could become an incentive for round tripping and sharp practices within the foreign exchange market.”
Mr Lawal also shed more light on the inflation issues that have affected the economy, “Inflation rate at eight per cent is still tolerable because it is still a single digit threshold, although there was a slight increase of 0.1 per cent when you relate what you had in May to what you had in April”, adding that “generally in terms of inflation we are not doing very badly”.
