An economist, Mr Tope Fasua, on Sunday, advised the Federal Government to take concrete steps to boost productivity, with strong local content, so as to firm up the value of the national currency.
“Your currency is only as strong as the productivity that underlies it, and this is talking about the knowledge quotient of the goods and service that a country produces.
“If a country does not have a lot of local content going into the products it exports then the currency of that country will have issues with stability. However, we cannot afford to float this currency fully because we have no strong backing.
“Some stakeholders who are pushing Nigeria into the direction of floating the naira have sinister aims. A lot of them have taken positions against the country,’’ he said.
Fasua, who is the founder of Global Analytics Consulting Ltd, a consulting firm, said this in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
He warned against floating the naira fully as that could be counter productive, especially given the fluctuations in its value and recent official devaluation.
The economist stressed the need for the use and application of knowledge-based productivity in the nation’s economy as panacea to stabilising and strengthening the value of the naira.
Fasua suggested that Nigerian youths should also be given more responsibilities in order to improve productivity.
“We just have to think about increasing productivity in our country; we have to think about improving the knowledge quotient. We should take charge of our crude oil exploration; we should standardise our agricultural productions to attract foreign markets.
“In terms of increasing our productivity, we should go back to our youths in higher institutions and see what they can do to support development.
“Government should offer certain incentives to the youths and give them certain responsibilities. We should gradually handover the country, intellectually to the youths,’’ he said.
The economist advised government to also look inwards for its borrowing plans to finance its budgets.
“Every country in the world is now borrowing to survive, whether locally or internationally. While strong countries like the USA are borrowing locally the weaker ones are borrowing internationally,’’ he said
