Nigeria Will Be Out Of Recession By Third Quarter, Emefiele Insists

Recall that the CBN boss in April said that with the current efforts by the Federal Government to revive the country’s economy, the country should be out of recession by the third quarter of this year.

Emefiele made this disclosure on Wednesday in Abuja.

He said “My view is that with all the positive signs we see: inflation tending downwards, GDP improving to the extent that negative growth rate has decelerated quite significantly, in fact we have seen foreign exchange going to the real sector and industrial capacities are beginning to improve

“We’ve seen positive signs in various economic sectors, I am very confident that at the end of the third quarter, we will be out of this and I still hold that position.

“We would prefer a convergence that will significantly be going southwards, than a convergence that will go northwards. The fact that we have seen a convergence in the southward direction gives us a lot of hope that things are working in the right direction.

“Even I, want a low interest rate but the economic aggregates that we see today, unfortunately, does not give room for us to begin to look at that direction of signalling a downward interest rate.

“You would have read World Bank and IMF reports and what they have both insisted is that we should tighten further. But rather than tightening, what the monetary policy committee has decided to do is to hold and watch, given that we had embarked on a consistent policy tightening before we decided to adopt the hold strategy.

“I have said it and I will repeat myself that the interventions will be more vigorous and intense, to underscore the fact that we are determined to ensure that the Nigerian economy recovers, by making sure that foreign exchange is being made available to all sectors of the Nigerian economy to conduct their businesses.”