President Muhammadu Buhari last week reappointed Mr Godwin Emefiele Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for another five years. Emefiele’s reappointment letter was read on the floor of the Senate by Senate President, Bukola Saraki on Thursday.
Emefiele was first appointed in 2014 by former President Goodluck Jonathan and was retained when Buhari came to office in 2015. Before assuming the office of the CBN governor, he was the Group Managing Director of Zenith Bank Plc.
As CBN governor, Emefiele introduced various interventions to ensure that the naira was kept stable during the recession, including introducing a list of items for whose import foreign exchange was made unavailable. The list of 41 items now contains 43.
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He also introduced an investors and exporters window while directing banks to sell forex to customers over the counter for basic travel allowance (BTA), medical and education bills.
Stakeholders have applauded the appointment and praised the CBN governor’s efforts in providing direction and stability to the economy.
They noted the efforts of the CBN under Emefiele in boosting the foreign exchange market by providing enough funds to end users through retail outlets as well as the reduction of the tenor of its forward sales from the hitherto maximum cycle of 180 days, to no more than 60 days from the date of transaction.
Aside direct sales to Bureau de change (BDCs) operators, fuel importers, airlines, manufacturers, agriculture sub-sectors have continued to benefit through the retail-Special Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS), at a marginal rate of N310/$. This measure has continued to help stabilise the economy and boost the nation’s GDP.
Emefiele’s CBN has also boosted federal government’s local investment following the bank’s careful macroeconomic management of the economy.
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The CBN has also intervened massively in the real sector by supporting projects in agriculture, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and infrastructure.
Some of the interventions included the N300 billion real sector support facility (RSSF); the N220 billion Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund (MSMEDF); the N213 billion Nigeria Electricity Market Stabilisation Fund; N500 billion Non-Oil Export Stimulation Facility; and the N75 billion Nigeria Incentive Based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL).
Also the CBN- initiated Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) scaled down the huge foreign exchange spent by Nigeria on importing food items following its kick off in Kebbi, Sokoto, Niger, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa, Kano, Zamfara, Admawa, Plateau, Lagos, Ogun, Cross River and Ebonyi and Imo states.
Under Emefiele, inflation has been put in check with efforts being made to bring it under single digit.