Dr. Muda Yusuf, the Director/CEO of CPPE, emphasizes the need for the administration of Bola Tinubu to promptly deploy these mitigating measures. He stresses that such interventions should include tax incentives for low-income employees and small businesses, import duty reductions on critical intermediate products, and duty concessions for key sectors such as transportation, health, power, and energy. These measures, made feasible by the improved fiscal space created through reforms, must be implemented urgently to ensure a human-centered approach to the current reforms.
Yusuf also addresses the potential intensification of inflationary pressures and short-term pressures on the country’s exchange rate due to a backlog of forex demand. However, he anticipates that these pressures will ease by the end of the year, paving the way for a more tolerable and sustainable equilibrium exchange rate. To achieve this, he calls for the establishment of a sustainable intervention framework by the Central Bank of Nigeria to moderate forex market volatility.
