The World Bank Group has urged Nigeria to reduce government’s borrowing from the Central Bank if it wants to reduce the inflationary pressure on the economy.
World Bank’s Lead Economist for Nigeria, Alex Sienaert, stated this on Thursday during an economic review session at the Lagos Business School.
In his keynote presentation, Sienaert commended the government over its recent economic reforms, but noted that these reforms would have to be sustained for the economy to recover from present shocks and record considerable growth in the near future.
He said, “The whole agenda of tackling inflation is obviously a huge one. Some ideas include reducing subsidised CBN lending to medium and large firms and the government borrowing from CBN.
All of these things increase the money supply and reducing that will be helpful to reduce inflation, and then replacing imports with FX restrictions with tariffs.”
According to him, the fact that petrol price had significantly increased created pressure on the economy.
He added that a variety of solutions would have to be devised in order to mobilise more revenue a way that spending would be increased to tackle the real priorities in the country
