A former President of the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN), Dr Samuel Nzekwe, has called on the Federal Government to embrace a long-term economic diversification plan to reduce the nation’s inflation rate.
Nzekwe made the call in an interview with newsmen on Wednesday in Ota, Ogun, while reacting to the figure released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
It was gathered that the NBS had on Monday (May 16), said that the inflation rate increased from 15.9 percent in March to 16.8 percent in April.
He noted that the federal government needed to develop a long-term plan for economic diversification to make the nation a more producing economy.
In his words, “If the federal government has done the long-term plan for economic diversification, most of the things imported from aboard would have been produced in Nigeria.
“The country is not producing enough goods for consumption. So, we depend on importing into the country and the provision of dollars to do this is inadequate.”
He described the development as external volatility as naira to dollar for importation were very high, noting that this contributed to the current inflation figure in the country.
Nzekwe appealed to the federal government to redouble its efforts in providing conducive environment for the manufacturing sector to produce more goods.
This, he noted, would help to reduce the continuous inflation rate.
According to him, when the manufacturing sector produces more goods, there will more goods for local consumption and some of the goods will also be exported.
He also said that the manufacturing sector would also generate more revenue for the country and help the currency to be stable.
He suggested that the Federal Government should also trim down its recurrent expenditures so that the cost of running the governance could be drastically reduced.
Nzekwe urged the government to also provide enabling environment for digital economy to thrive for more economic activities that could bring down the high inflation rate.
The ex-ANAN president added that the government should block all leakages through which money goes into individual pockets in form of corruption.
(NAN)