How to curb Nigeria’s inflation – CPPE

The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has said made recommendations to curb Nigeria’s high inflationary pressures, which continued to be a major worry to stakeholders in the Nigeria economy.

Its Chief Executive Officer, Dr Muda Yusuf, made the recommendations while reacting to the January inflation rate in an interview with our correspondent on Tuesday in Lagos.

The CPPE boss said to curb inflation, the federal government needed to tackle insecurity, reduce fiscal policy deposit monetisation and create an investment friendly tax environment.

“Government must also address concerns around high energy cost, reduce import duty on intermediate products and raw materials for industries to reduce production costs.”

“They must also ensure the restoration of normalcy and good order at the nations ports to reduce transaction costs and manage climate change consequences to reduce flooding and desertification,” he said.

It was reported that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported a marginal drop of 0.87 per cent, in headline inflation from 16.47 per cent in January 2021 to 15.60 per cent in January 2022.

However, on a month on month basis, there was an uptrend in general price level by 1.47 per cent between December 2021 and January 2022.

Yusuf stated that although the economy recorded a marginal decline in headline inflation in January year on year, key drivers of inflationary pressure remained largely unchanged.

Some of these, he said, included exchange rate depreciation, liquidity challenges, security concerns, climate change, high energy and transportation costs.

Others, he said, were structural constraints affecting agricultural value chain, monetisation of fiscal deficit, high import duties, high charges at the ports, and aggressive revenue drive by government agencies.