Emefiele: Our meetings with China, IMF, World Bank will yield results

Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says Nigeria is currently meeting with China, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank on its economic objectives.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington, Emefiele said the country is in discussion with Chinese delegates on investing in Nigeria.

“Basically, there is a lot of networking meetings going on, and I can assure you that meetings are going on with some of our partners, China particularly,” Emefiele said.

“We are going into a meeting with Chinese delegation. I know that with the meeting that would be held with the Managing Director of IMF as well World Bank Group, we are going to achieve some of the objectives.”

Speaking on the IMF three-pronged approach on using fiscal, monetary and trade policies to achieve economic growth, the governor said Nigeria had been doing that before “IMF spoke of it at this meeting”.

“Basically there is no gainsaying the fact that, that has to be the direction everybody has to go and I think that we are doing that in Nigeria,” he said.

“There is serious coordination and collaboration between the monetary and fiscal authorities, and I believe that if we continue in this direction, we would achieve that objective.

“We have done a couple of reforms, such as the flexible exchange rate regime. It is picking up gradually. When you are in the type of situation that we are in, naturally you find out that people are a little bit skeptical.

“But with time, as we develop the confidence, we would begin to see more of them coming into the country.”

On diversifying foreign reserves into Renminbi, Emefiele said: “I believe in the course of time, we would achieve it. Nigeria happens to be one of the foremost countries in the world that adopted the Renminbi as a reserve currency.

“We would work together with China to ensure that we also get our fair share of the benefit from this arrangement.”

ADEOSUN: NIGERIA TOO BIG TO FAIL

On her part, Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, said: “If we can invest in critical infrastructure, we can improve productivity, create jobs and that would be very comforting for our people. Nigeria is too big to fail.

“We are too significant in the region to under-perform. So, what we are trying to do is to reset the Nigerian story so that we can grow. To grow, we need to have the enabling infrastructure.

“We need to have power and we have gotten some commitments. We also need to improve transport, rail, housing.  We are really confident that we would get back to growth.”