Senator Ned Nwoko has said Nigeria’s monetary policies and fiscal policies, can turn things around if there is credit economy.
Nwoke, who represents Delta North senatorial dìstrict acknowledged that “we know that we have problems in Nigeria, real economic problems resulting in unbearable hardships for the people”.
According to the lawmaker, a credit economy is an economy where people are able to borrow with minimum conditions.
“But for you to borrow, you must have interest rates that are manageable” he said.
Senator Nwoko made this known while fielding questions from newsmen on Wednesday in Abuja.
Speaking on the state of the economy, he said most countries in the world have interest rates between 3 and 6 percent, pointing out that in Nigeria, it is between 12 and 30 percent.
He said: “So for me, the first policy is the crash interest rate. And this will just take a government policy to do. And all over the world,
no government leaves interest rates to be determined by banks.
“Banks want to make profit.
They are not thinking about consumers. That is not their concern. So for you to
begin to borrow, government must come out emphatically on this and say, interest rates from first of March, for example,
will no longer be more than 4, 5 percent, for example.
“And everybody will adjust. The banks will adjust. So instead of a bank making a profit of about 500 billion, every year,
they willl probably make a profit of about 100 billion. It is still good.
So that is number one.
“And much more importantly, is the issue of exchange rates. Exchange rates have become such a hydro-headed issue, because of our reliance on foreign currencies. So much so that every petty trader in my village, or your villages, who is selling dairy or palm oil, is talking about exchange rates”.
He opined that exchange rates, ordinarily, should be something that concerns foreign transactions with dollars. But everybody now understands that Naira has no value. So what do we do? Nwoko asked.
