TRIBUNE
The new Cental Bank of Nigeria governor, OLayemi Cardoso has stated how Tinubu’s administration will address Forex scarcity, and inflation in the country.
The Senate on resumption of plenary on Tuesday confirmed the nomination of Olayemi Cardoso as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Four other nominees of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the offices of Deputy Governors of the apex bank were also confirmed. They included, Mrs Emem Nnana Usoro, Mr Muhammad Sani Abdullahi Dattijo, Mr Philip Ikeazor and Dr Bala M. Bello.
Addressing the gathering of Senators on the floor of the Red Chamber, Cardoso promised to restore the CBN to its core functions.
“A refocused CBN will better serve the country. In restoring the CBN to its core mandate, we must limit CBN to its advisory role and facilitate new regulatory framework,” he said.
Giving an insight into how he will mitigate the free fall of the Naira as against the Greenback, Cardoso highlighted what he called short term and long term measures to address both the devaluation of the Naira and the rising inflationary trend.
He said:” On the issue of foreign exchange which everybody has been talking about is very worrisome. It goes without saying that for the sort of country we want we need to have an exchange rate that is very stable . For country that we all dream of we need to have an exchange rate that is stable
There are short and medium term measures
“The major short term measure has to do with balance of payments over a period of time like the sort of things that are being done already with respect to ensuring that you are getting more Petroleum Resources and diversifying the economic base of the country. That I believe will continue by the present administration and of course it will take time I think we should take that as a medium.
“The more immediate is what you need to look at . Number one, is what I call operational issue.
“We are aware that there are unsettled obligations by the CBN. Whether it is N$4b, N$5b or N$7b, I don’t know but definitely the immediate priority is to ascertain the extent.
“We need to find a way to take care of that. It will be naive for us to be expecting to succeed if we are not able to handle that side of the foreign exchange market.
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