Lagos, April 1, 2025 (NAN) Some experts have urged the Federal Government to support domestic production and entrench fiscal discipline as measures to check the inflation rate.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!They said this in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Tuesday.
Prof. Bright Eregha, Lecturer of Macroeconomics, Pan-Atlantic University, said government support for domestic production was necessary in enhancing the economy and checking inflation.
“The government should initiate macroeconomic policies that will ensure the growth of domestic manufacturing firms.
“This will enable indigenous production firms to manufacture substitutes for imported commodities and conserve scarce resources,” Eregha said.
He stressed that the government could continue to entrench transparency in the foreign exchange market to ensure its stability.
“This will mitigate the inflation rate and engender investment confidence in the general economy,” Eregha said.
Mr Chris Nemedia, former Executive Director, Research Department, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), advocated for the government to entrench fiscal discipline in the economy.
“The government should be shrewd with its expenditures in respect to its investment programmes and give priority to capital expenditures.
However, recurrent expenditures should be watched, especially at sub-national levels of government, where various schemes are executed without being in the budget,” Nemedia said.
He emphasised that the government should put effort into addressing the insecurity threat responsible for food-induced inflation.
“The government should be more innovative and utilise more sophisticated technology in containing the threat posed to farmers in agrarian communities.
This will motivate farmers to venture into large-scale mechanised agriculture and food inflation could begin to abate,” Nemedia said.
Mr Akin Alabi, Co-founder of Corporate Farmer International, also said the government could tackle food inflation by addressing the rising cost of transportation.
“Since the government totally removed the petroleum subsidy, the prices of logistics have increased, which is the primary cause of food being too expensive.
Conveying food produce from the Northern part of the country to the South is exorbitant, which often times is factored into the prices of the produce,” Alabi said.
He noted that the government should invest more in railway transport to ameliorate the cost of food produce and check the inflation rate.
“The government prioritising railway transport across the country is a cheaper mode of conveying food produce from the hinterland to the urban areas,” Alabi said.
NAN reports that Nigeria’s inflation rate eased for the second consecutive month in February, raising hopes that price pressures may have peaked and could continue to moderate in the coming months.
The National Bureau of Statistics, in its latest report released, said the country’s headline inflation rate dropped to 23.18 per cent in February from 24.48 percent recorded in January, reflecting a 1.30 per cent decrease within the month.
On a year-on-year basis, the inflation rate dropped by 8.52 per cent points from 31.70 per cent recorded in February 2024.
The NBS noted that while the inflation figures were calculated using a different base year, the decline suggests a significant slowdown in price increases compared to the same period last year.
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