Following the unveiling of a five-year policy thrust by the Central Bank of Nigeria, experts are unanimous in their optimism that the blueprint will provide the much-needed impetus for economic transformation, report Kunle Aderinokun and James Emejo
Instructively, the apex bank boss promised to embark on a programme that would lead to the recapitalisation of the banking industry within the next five years, citing the need to position Nigerian banks among the top 500 in the world. He said:”You will all agree with me that it was Governor Soludo in 2004 that did the last recapitalisation we had, moving the capitalisation from N2 billion to N25 billion.
“It is a policy thrust which will be discussed at the Committee of Governors’ meeting and of course, the framework for the recapitalisation of Nigerian banks will be unfolded for the whole world to know.” He said within the intervening period, the CBN will further encourage banks to direct more focus in supporting the education sector, apparently to try to arrest the sector’s dwindling fortunes.
He also disclosed that the apex bank will leverage monetary policy tools in supporting a low inflation environment, while seeking to maintain stability in exchange rate- with a key emphasis on supporting improved GDP growth and greater private sector investment. Emefiele said:”Our ultimate objective is to anchor the public’s inflation expectation at single-digit in the medium to long run. We believe a low and stable inflationary environment is essential to the growth of our economy because it will help support long term planning by individuals and businesses.
He said: “We intend to aggressively implement our N500 billion facility aimed at supporting the growth of our non-oil exports, which will help to improve non-oil export earnings.” Also, Emefiele said the CBN will launch a Trade Monitoring System in October, which is an automated system that will reduce the length of time required to process export documents from one week to a day, adding that the measure will help support efforts at improving non-oil exports of goods and services.
He said the CBN will further work with NIBSS, banks and Fintechs in developing a regulatory sandbox to “enable us to test financial innovations by Fintechs and banks in a controlled environment, in order to assess its impact on the growth and safety of our financial system.”