The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun said in the United States yesterday that Nigeria needs improved oil production to beat forex supply challenges and reduce pressure in the foreign exchange market.
He spoke during the G-24 news conference at the ongoing World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings in Washington DC, U.S.
Edun, who is the 2nd Vice Chair of the G24, said that addressing forex supply issues will be a major step in fixing Nigeria’s forex challenges.
The minister spoke on a day that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) threw its weight behind Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN’s) monetary tightening measures to tame inflation.
The IMF, however, downgraded Nigeria’s economy growth this year by two point from 3.1 per cent to 2.9 per cent.
He said: “The key issue about foreign exchange shortage is supply. As an oil producing country, we just need to get our oil production up, and we will deal with that forex shortage and foreign exchange pressure.
“Of course, the Western world – the rich countries have effectively defeated inflation and that’s why the interest rates can come down. The governor of the central bank in Nigeria, in the context of high inflation, is continuing with monetary tightening to tackle inflation.”
Edun noted that some of the countries reforming their economies, domestically, work on achieving better debt sustainability measures in terms of debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio.
He said, in many of such countries, there could be forex liquidity constraints, particularly foreign exchange in relation to debt, servicing of the foreign and domestic debt.
