Nothing to celebrate in 1,200 naira/dollar exchange projection – Aigbogun

Frank Aigbogun, the chief executive officer of BussinessDay Media Limited, has said that there is nothing to celebrate if the naira appreciates against the dollar at the rate of N1,200.

The BusinessDay Newspaper’s publisher made this comment when he appeared on Channels Television’s programme, Sunrise Daily, on Monday.

Speaking on a report by Goldman Sachs which stated that the naira will appreciate N1,200 against the dollars in the next twelve months, Aigbogun said that there was no reason to be glad about the report. He said, “I don’t think it is worth celebrating let’s dismiss that very quickly. The better which we should talk about is the fact that if you read the Goldman Sachs report completely it was filed fully.

“You would find that many of these forecasts and expectations are contingent upon certain things. So, we should not stand when as it is we have gone down enough of the things that oversight those that as we do we are late to an appreciation of the buyer.”

He further explained that it should be of key importance to note that according to Goldman Sachs, its economic intelligence unit issued its metrobot on Saturday saying that there was a high probability that the naira could reach 15,000 by the end of the year.

While citing Egypt which sold some of its assets to UAE to the value of $24bn as an example, Aigbogun emphasised that he does not think this is a time for chorus.

“I don’t think it is time for chorus at all if you look at it. Take for instance, Egypt sold some of its assets to UAE to the value of $24bn in the last two weeks. Now, the Egyptian Pound has rallied from 70 to 49 pounds to the dollar as we speak. We can see such significant appreciation if we do the right thing.

“The Central Bank of Nigeria is working on demand thus ensuring that it squeezes liquidity that it offers improved a yield to investors to come in and on the back of that we have probably got half of what we got the whole of last year in a month in Nigeria so that is good. There is a lot of work that we need to do,” he said.

The renowned journalist seized the opportunity to advise the government on several ways in which they could act to make the nation’s economy great again.

He said, “We need to deal with the supply stand so far nothing is being done about it and I can give an instance. Significant increase in oil and gas production. I am not sure that anyone expected that after about a year that this government came in we would have the level of oil and gas production that we have today and we would still be at the level of oil and gas production that we are today.

“That is very poor. We need more dollars not just dollars. Not just dollars that we would go and beg for but dollars that we would earn legitimately. We also need to increase food supply and reduce food insecurity. We can do the simple basic things like creating roads to farms in Nigeria to ensure that harvest can come to the market and that is when we can reduce the about 40% of harvest waste we suffer without necessarily increasing the farm you use.

“Secondly, we need to curb the insecurity and improve power supply significantly. There cannot be increased production without power supply. I am at a loss as to why this is taking so long to happen. Now we must begin to question the competence of the power minister. I hear complaints all the time but there are still no policy initiatives to improve our power supply, generation and distribution.”