Nigeria must increase its patronage of locally made goods and services to stimulate economic activities and attain sustainable growth, the Chief Consultant, Associates Limited, Biodun Adedipe, said on Thursday.
Mr Adedipe spoke on the sidelines of the “Half Year 2017 Economic Review,’’ organised by the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN), in Lagos.
In terms of production, He said Nigeria should emulate China and India, especially the latter, for promoting “Make-in-India’’ goods and services.
On consumption, the economist said Nigerian economic agents (governments, corporate organizations and individuals) should development the habit of buying goods `Made-in-Nigeria’.
By adopting such economic policy, Mr Adedipe said trade would thrive on internal activities, while the country would engage in international trade to complement its earnings.
He noted that any country that does not produce a significant proportion of what it consumes locally would always be at the mercy of those countries that produce its goods and services.
The economist said the country’s estimated population put at 190.88 million, as at July 1, 2017, making it the 7th largest in the world, with potential to become 3rd by 2050.
Mr Adedipe said it’s the huge population that made the country to have a huge appetite for consumption of just about anything in the market for any tradable commodity.
“My take on the episodic economic troubles Nigeria falls into is simply that we produce what we don’t consume in terms of natural resources that we harvest and export.
“We consume what we don’t produce – being largely import dependent, for all conceivable things.
“The salvation for the Nigerian economy, beyond engendering recovery from the abating recession, is found in promoting aggressively the ‘Made-in-Nigeria’ campaign.
“In Nigeria, most of the things that catch our fancy, we actually don’t produce them. We, therefore, end up creating jobs offshore,’’ he added.
Mr Adedipe supported the ‘unorthodox’ monetary policy stance of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), saying that it should continue until the economy achieves stability.
“The issue is using your orthodox policy for as long as your financial system is at risk; once you are outside of the risk region, that is, where your economy is no longer fragile, you abandon it and you turn to orthodox management.
“In my latest encounter with the CBN, they said no we haven’t gotten to a comfortable level yet.
“But, I understand that because they know that if government is spending to expand the economy, that’s expansionary fiscal operation and that would trigger interest rates.
“So, they recognize that even if they drop interest rates, it will more or less demoralize the situation,’’ he noted. (NAN)
