The Director-General, Lagos Chamber of Commerce & Industry (LCCI), Dr Chineyere Almona, has lamented that the economy is in dire straits and needs urgent attention.
She spoke to The Nation in her office yesterday. She said the economy is in such a state because it has been poorly managed over a long period of time.
She said: “As an advocacy body we engage the government at all fronts because we are clear in our mind that the way forward is to ensure export earnings and government revenues are well diversified.
“As it stands, we can say the economy is diversified because of the creative industry and the agriculture sector but while this is true the oil sector still contributes about 50 per cent of government earnings or more meaning that something more impactful needs to be done.
“Almost all of our export earnings come from oil and that’s a big challenge. We need to find ways to make the government harness other sectors of the economy.
“Tax is a good area to increase income but the way the government is minding it, is not appropriate. If we can enhance the agricultural sector and export what we grow with value addition then we can earn revenue from that sector. As it stands, unfortunately, our productive sector has not been harnessed. We should rely more on manufacturing and exporting the excess, but, unfortunately, it is not what it should be because of the percentage of value added.”
According to her, the manufacturing sector is challenged because the cost of production is too high. She reiterated that local manufactured products are not competitive even if we try to export them because the cost of production is too high.
The LCCI chief stressed that until the nation develops a competitive advantage, it would be motion without movement.
On the depreciation of the Naira she said that CBN has done that several times without a good result. However, she advised the apex bank to work on the demand side unlike what they have always done working on the supply side.
Furthermore, she asked the government to come out with the right policy to encourage Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), noting that currently Diasporan inflow is encouraging and that LCCI is also working on seeing the government encourage value addition in the agriculture sector to get people employed and take the youths off the street.
She however stated that investors into the economy would be wary of investing into the economy because of security concerns and the need to secure their Return on Investment (Rol).
Almona also canvassed the need for port reforms, including the Nigerian Customs, on the need to go digital to discourage delays with goods clearance, imports and exports. She lamented that several businesses had gone into debts because of demurrage occasioned by incompetence of the Customs and related agencies.
She added: “As an advocacy body we engage government regularly on ease of doing business, to establish a holistic and comprehensive policy to encourage both small and large enterprise.”