In this week’s article, we shall discuss the impact of a weaker exchange rate on various sectors of the economy, and also consider whether or not naira devaluation is imminent and inevitable.

The youths, they say, “are the future of any nation”. In the light of this awareness, the process of youth education and development would be top priority on the list of objectives for any progressive nation.

This week, I invite you to consider the following excerpts from Toyin Dawodu’s response to Forbes’ (a foremost international business magazine) conclusions from its interview with Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy. Dawodu is Managing Partner of Capital Investment Group in the United States, and he wrote as follows:

In keeping with our regrettable tradition of late enactment of Appropriation Bills, the 2014 budget was belatedly approved by the legislature, in April; i.e. well over three months into the fiscal year. In this event, this year’s budget, just like previous ones, will only be partially implemented, despite the adverse social impact of partial implementation. However, late passage is not our only challenge with annual budgets.

In the aftermath of the announcement that Nigeria’s current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had risen to $510bn, the question on the street was simply, that of, whether or not food will become readily available on the table for the common man, and whether or not the teeming millions of Nigerian youths who are currently unemployed will quickly be provided with jobs.

There can be no end in the foreseeable future to a do-or-die fight for the presidency of our nation. The unbridled struggle for the position of top dog has generally been motivated by the attraction of the prospect of almost absolute power over our lives and our nation’s resources, particularly the proceedas from the oil wells of the Niger Delta.

Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), in practice, is the strategic benchmark for modulating best practice standards in the critical economic indices of inflation, cost of funds and exchange rate.

This column has consistently maintained that the root cause of our economic paradox of increasing income, with unbridled unemployment rate, and deepening poverty will be found in the conscious and incorrect adoption of a faulty process for the infusion of our crude export dollar revenue into the economy.

In a recent online interactive program with Nigerian youths, the Finance Minister and the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, gave the assurance that “Nigeria does not have a debt problem, as the ratio between our debt and our nation’s total output (GDP) is a mere 21%, which, compares favourably with 40 to 60% benchmark for emerging economies and more favourably with the United Kingdom and United States’ debt to GDP ratios of 89 and 90% respectively.

Nigerians generally believe that large foreign reserves are useful for defending the exchange rate of the naira. However, our total foreign reserves actually comprise of two primary income streams; the first is the Excess Crude Account (ECA), which consists of all crude oil revenue in excess of budget estimates

Whistleblowers certainly have a role to play to promote accountability in public administration; however, when a nation’s Central Bank Governor turns whistleblower on an issue of substantial revenue misappropriation, then, alarm bells must ring, as the credibility of the administration, which the same Central Bank Governor serves would be called to question.

The increasing length of queues lately in petrol stations nationwide may suggest that the erstwhile liberal availability of petrol may be threatened. Consequently, many car owners now inevitably patronise the ‘black market’ in spite of the higher prices on offer, rather than wait endlessly in frustration at petrol stations!

Nigerians could be forgiven, if their impulsive reaction to the above comparison is a derisive sneer because of the general perception that the Zimbabwean economy was dysfunctional. Indeed, about five years ago, Zimbabwe was the ultimate butt of universal jokes because of the abiding inflationary spiral that had gone haywire at 231,000,000%!

In October 2012, several media reports confirmed that two men were helping Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) operatives with information on how they came about $986,000 found on them at Lagos and Kano International Airports respectively.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), at its meeting last week, retained Central Bank’s benchmark interest rate at the industrially destabilising level of 12%, to avert the threat of inflation.