Ezekwesili: Less costly policy will send black market away not DSS bullets

Oby Ezekwesili, former vice-president of the world bank, says the raid of the Department of States Services (DSS) on the foreign exchange market will drive the market underground.

The co-founder of Transparency International, said she initially thought the DSS raid on Bureau De Change (BDC)  operators was “mere beer parlour talk,” further querying what the Nigerian economy had become.

In a series of tweet on Monday, Ezekwesili said: “less costly policy would be one that makes FX black market spots go out of business without DSS bullets.”

“Economies respond better to market based allocation of scarce resources like Forex to economic activities. We’re still struggling with this,” she tweeted.

“The immediate impact of a forceful ‘law&order-type’ intervention of DSS in Forex market is NOT sustainable & will drive market UNDERGROUND.

The immediate impact of a forceful "law&order-type" intervention of DSS in Forex market is NOT sustainable & will drive market UNDERGROUND😔

— Oby Ezekwesili (@obyezeks) November 14, 2016

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“I wonder at what stage the federal government will admit that something is unhinged in its mostly Statist Economic Philosophy? #NotWorking.

“There is a reason for the Economic idiom — ‘You cannot eat your cake and have it’. Our Forex policy and management needs to lean on this.

“Economic Fundamentals are near universal in application and the real margins of context variables now lie within the ‘institutional issues'”.

Last week the DSS and police raided the parallel market, forcing dealers to sell at N400 or less.

Dealers, who spoke to TheCable, said they do not have dollars to sell at the price the DSS was asking them to sell for.

Many dealers across the country are seen as putting up a price of N400 to the dollar, but selling at about N455 to N460.

Ezekwesili said “if one were persuaded that the Economic Philosophy underpinning these policy choices is that of ‘Developmental State Capitalism’. Sadly NOT”.

“Any Developmental State philosophy dies on the alter of our uniquely predatory elite that dominate our politics & weakness of our systems.”