By Chinwendu Obienyi
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says it has no plans to extend its special funding into other sectors beyond Agriculture, Aviation, Power and the manufacturing sectors.
This was disclosed Wednesday in Lagos by Emmanuel Ukeje, the special adviser to the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN), while speaking on the impact and outcome of the financial regulators’ policy and actions on Channels Television.
According to him, the bank is not thinking of going into more intervention as it has already pumped a total of N436.33 billion as intervention funds into several sectors of the country.
“In the aviation sector, we have spent about N120 billion on 16 projects. In the power sector, we have spent about N156 billion under the electricity stabilization fund. For purposes of actually ensuring supply of light, we have spent N49.6 billion on distribution companies (Discos) and we also disbursed N49 billion to generating companies (Gencos), while gas suppliers benefited to the tune of N15.6 billion.
“We are currently not thinking of going into more fiscal intervention because of the impact on our balance sheet. So, for now, I am not aware that we are intervening in any other sector”, he said.
Commenting on the 41 banned items, Ukeje said the bank’s decision has yielded the desired results as the impact of the restriction has generated employment for Nigerians, engendered domestic production of products, improved domestic capacity and conserved scarce foreign exchange.
“Looking back, we know that the decision has yielded the desired fruits as a lot of industries have adjusted and they have been able to source their inputs locally. We have seen industries coming up in terms of production of those particular commodities not allocated foreign exchange and that has created jobs for 500 Nigerians in the main for now and of course has saved us the foreign exchange which we did not have in that point in time to use for other things”, he explained.
The Special assistant thereafter said the bank is not looking at lifting the restrictions on the items as it already have replacements as people are actually producing them.
“Given the way we are going and the production of those particular products, we already have replacements for them because people are actually producing them so what are we talking about lifting the ban on those items? The issue is if fx is available and people think they have enough foreign exchange to bring them in, well they could if they can compete with local production, that is the main issue,” Ukeje said.