The Federal Government said, yesterday, that there was no truth in allegations that the nation’s economic policy measures were being dictated by the International Monetary Fund, IMF and the World Bank.President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration had been accused of doing the bidding of the two institutions by devaluing the Naira twice in less than six months. However, the Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Amb. Bashir Yuguda said in a lecture at the National Defence College, Abuja, that the government took the steps based on its convictions that the Naira devaluation was inevitable.
His words, “Nobody is dictating to us as a government. Our donor friends can advise us but we are not bound to take such advice.”
According to him, the measure was necessary to avoid depleting the nation’s foreign reserves to an unsustainable level. The IMF had severally urged the Nigerian monetary authorities to devalue the naira, as far back as 2011 but the then Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido and now Emir of Kano rejected the advice, choosing rather to defend the naira with reserves.
The minister defended the performance of the economy under the current administration, in spite of the challenges posed by low oil revenue, as testified to by global rating agencies such as Fitch, as well as Standard & Poors.
He said, “if you look at the outcome of rating agencies such as Standard and Poors, while all the 11 OPEC members economy forecast were downgraded including Saudi Arabia, Nigeria was never placed under negative watch. For the last three years, the issue of devaluation never happened until the recent fall in oil prices which made the CBN to devalue for us to take advantage and shore up revenue from non-oil sector through diversification to non-oil exports. So we are watching keenly and CBN will take the appropriate steps”.
