Ex-CBN director urges FG to boost agriculture

Dr Titus Okunrounmu, a former Director, Research Department of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has appealed to the Federal Government to further diversify the economy into agriculture based.

Okunrounmu made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Ota.

He explained that this will help to stem continuous rising of inflation rate in the country.

He spoke against the backdrop of inflation figure that was released by National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday in Abuja.

Supreme News reports that the NBS reported that the inflation rate increased from 25.80 per cent in August to 26.70 per cent in September.

Okunrounmu noted that there was no way federal government budget would be financed on deficit and that there would not be rising inflationary trend in the country.

The former CNN director added that the nation’s budget had been financed from domestic borrowing from commercial bank banks and the apex bank.

“Obviously, we should expect some inflation tradeoff in the country.

“To reduce the budget deficits, there is the need to review and reduce the recurrent budget expenditure.

“The fertile lands of Nigeria can be cultivated for agriculture and employ youths directly in government farm plantations all over the country,” he said.

Okunrounmu said that much of our domestic consumption could be produced and processed in Nigeria, adding that the country should start to export processed agricultural products and not raw exports only to go back and import refined products for consumption.

This, he said, would help to drastically bring down the nation’s inflation rate and stabilise the Forex exchange market.

The former CBN director also stressed the need for the federal government to repair all its refineries to control the hike in transport fares, leading to high cost of goods, thus contributing to continuous rising of inflation rate.

He added that the country could no longer depend on a monopoly or individual to solve the problem of fuel supply to over 200 million population.