The Federal Government can strengthen the value of the national currency, the Naira, and boost productivity to the implementation of a strong local content policy, take concrete steps to boost productivity, an economist has said.
Tope Fasua, Chief Executive of Global Analytics Consulting Limited said the country’s national currency was only as strong as the productivity underlining it in terms of the knowledge quotient of the goods and services a country produces.
“If a country does not have a lot of local content activities currently going into the products it exports, then the currency of that country will have issues with stability. However, we cannot afford to float this currency fully, because we have no strong backing,” he said.
“Some stakeholders who are pushing Nigeria into the direction of floating the Naira have sinister aims. A lot of them have taken positions against the country,’’ he said.
Mr Fasua warned against floating the naira fully, saying that could be counter-productive, especially given the fluctuations in its value and recent official devaluation.
The economist stressed the need for the use and application of knowledge-based productivity in managing the nation’s economy as a panacea to stabilizing and strengthening the value of the naira.
Mr Fasua suggested that Nigerian youths should also be given more responsibilities in order to improve productivity.
“We just have to think about increasing productivity in our country; we have to think about improving the knowledge quotient. We should take charge of our crude oil exploration; we should standardize our agricultural productions to attract foreign markets.
“In terms of increasing our productivity, we should go back to our youths in higher institutions and see what they can do to support development.
“Government should offer certain incentives to the youths and give them certain responsibilities. We should gradually handover the country, intellectually to the youths,’’ he said.
The economist advised the government to also look inwards for its borrowing plans to finance its budgets.
“Every country in the world is now borrowing to survive, whether locally or internationally. While strong countries like the USA are borrowing locally the weaker ones are borrowing internationally,’’ he said. MEDIATRACNET
