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Buhari Directs CBN To Stop Funding Food Importation
President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to stop making foreign exchange available for the importation of food items.
Buhari gave the directive at the fifth regular meeting with the presidential economic advisory council that held at the statehouse in Abuja.
Ekohotblog reports that the development makes it the third time that the president would issue the directive; first in August 2019 and again in September 2020.
A statement by Garba Shehu, the president’s senior special assistant on media and publicity, quoted Buhari as saying the people must produce what they consume.
He said his administration will address the issued surge in food prices in 2021.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, food inflation stood at 18.30 percent in November; a sign of increasing food prices in the country.
“Already, about seven states are producing all the rice we need. We must eat what we produce,” Buhari said.
He said the country must embrace agriculture as the mainstay of its economy, he said the oil industry the country rely on was in disarray, noting that the best way to tackle the economic downturn the country was enmeshed in was to return to the farm
“We are being squeezed to produce at 1.5 million barrels a day as against a capacity to produce 2.3 million. At the same time, the technical cost of our production per barrel is high, compared to the Middle East production”
He noted that the government will not relent in its effort to get the people back to agriculture, adding that the elite had imbibed the notion that the country was rich in oil, hence abandoning the land for the city for oil riches.
“We are back to the land now. We must not lose the opportunity to make life easier for our people. Imagine what would have happened if we didn’t encourage agriculture and closed the borders. We would have been in trouble.”
Buhari praised his administration for the success it has recorded in diversifying the economy to reduce over-reliance on crude oil.
Read Also: National Assembly Seeks Buhari Assent To 2021 Budget
The meeting reviewed the global and domestic economy in 2020 and agreed on a number of measures to improve the nation’s economy in 2021.
In specific terms, it noted that the country’s economic growth continues to be constrained by obvious challenges including infrastructural deficiencies and limited resources for government financing.
It emphasized the need to make the private sector of the economy the primary source of investment, rather than government.
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