The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, says the Nigerian economy is moving in the right direction as policies of the new administration has started slowing down food inflation.
The minister spoke virtually on Channels Television’s Business Incorporated programme from Washington DC where he is attending the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings.
Edun said himself and Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, are in Washington DC to showcase the progress made so far in the Nigerian economy.
The finance minister said, “The Economic Team of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is here to showcase the progress so far of his bold, courageous and strategic reforms of the Nigerian economy in order to get it stabilize and get investment in to get it growing again.
“We’ve all seen what has happened in terms of stabilizing the exchange rate and inflation which is headed in the right direction.
“If you look closely at the numbers that came out yesterday (Monday), you will see that there is a slowing of the rate of increase of food inflation, things are moving in the right direction, government revenues are up, even oil revenues are up but not as much as we will like.”
Prices of food and basic commodities have gone through the roof in the last weeks, as Nigerians battle one of the country’s toughest economic crises sparked by the current government’s twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of forex windows.
However, on Monday, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report showed that the food inflation rate in March 2024 stood at 3.62%, showing a decline of 0.17% from February 2024, when it was 3.79%. But the report showed that for year-on-year, food inflation reached 40.01% in March 2024, marking an increase of 15.56 percentage points from 24.45% in March 2023.
Conversely, the NBS said Nigeria’s inflation rate jumped to 33.20% in March 2024 compared to February 2024 headline inflation rate which was 31.70%.
The inflation for March 2024 was largely driven by increase in food such as garri, millet, yam, bread coupled with energy and housing costs.
The inflation report by the NBS followed the hike of Nigeria’s interest rate from 22.75% to 24.75% by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the apex bank.
Interestingly, the March inflation rate was released at a time when measures by the apex bank to strengthen the naira against foreign exchange have seen some positive results.
The naira has appreciated against the dollar in recent weeks, gaining over 40%, from about N1,900/$ to about N1,100/$1 now.
As the naira rebounds, Nigerians expect significant reduction in the prices of food and basic commodities but this hasn’t been the case with cost of living still high.