By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele, has held an interactive session with members of the private sector in the country so as to have their views on his five-year roadmap.
This month, Mr Emefiele commenced his second tenure of five years in office after he was reappointed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
At the consultative round table held in Lagos last week and tagged Growing for Growth,’ participants shared with the chief banker how he and his team can help the economy grow faster and better.
Chairman of Dangote Group and Africa’s richest man, Mr Aliko Dangote, said at the meeting that for Nigeria to witness economic growth, government must collaborate with the organised private sector.
He also said the electricity issue in the country must be resolved because no country can record any significant growth when industries are powered with generators.
In addition, Mr Dangote said banks must support the private sector by giving entrepreneurs easy access to consumer credit.
Others things he said must be done are increase house mortgages, increased focus on agriculture and manufacturing sectors.
“Government needs to have partnership with the private companies to access growth. It needs to encourage private sector investors, so that they do not rely on oil to pay salaries. That of oil should go into implementation for perfection of the economy.
“We the local investors should drive this country. No foreigner will invest in the country unless we locals do.
“The other thing that we need to look at is easy access to consumer credit. Consumer credit will help the government in fighting corruption.
“Also, another issue is smuggling. There is no country that can survive near the Republic of Benin because their main job is facilitating smuggling,” Mr Dangote said.
On his part, founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank, Mr Atedo Peterside, listed high tax rates, among others, as harmful to the growth of young and start-ups businesses, exchange rate instability, high
inflationary rate, among others, as bottlenecks impeding growth in the economy.
Speaking at the event, the convener, Mr Emefiele, said the points highlighted by the businessmen would be looked into.
On the smuggling issue, which the CBN chief said was a sabotage to the nation’s economy, he said efforts would be made to punish those encouraging it.
According to him, the CBN would close bank accounts of any company or person caught in smuggling and dumping of banned products into the country.
“Smugglers and dumpers are the major sabotage to the country’s economic policies. Nigeria is very good at making brilliant economic policies but we have identified smugglers and dumpers as those who sabotage these policies and we have decided we will deal with them and the strategy we came up with is that we will not bother ourselves.
“There is an agency of the government that is responsible for border control but that if these people pass through this border control, we would use the instrumentality of being the regulator for the banking system, to make sure that we get the banks to provide all details about these smugglers and dumpers, to provide investigation and if they are found culpable in economic sabotage bordering on dumping and smuggling in Nigeria.
“We will not only block their accounts; we will close their accounts in all the Nigerian banks simultaneously. We will close the accounts of the owners of those companies and we will close the accounts of top management members of those companies because they know that their companies are involved in smuggling and they should not be supporting those keep and of things.”
On the reason for the round table discussion, Mr Emefiele said, “We are here today as part of the engagement that we have planned, preparatory to the CBN releasing another five-year vision and agenda for the next tenure of the Governor of CBN.
“As you can see, we have at this session private sector leaders like Aliko Dangote, people in telecommunications, people in manufacturing, people in the IT sector, people in the agricultural sector and banking sector. All of them are represented.
“Basically, what we are saying here is that we want to give them opportunity, I will use the word to vent their view about what they think the CBN, the monetary policy committee should be doing in the next five years to support the economy and indeed to support the growth of the economy.”
Adedapo Adesanya