President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) Dr Mike Olawale Cole wants government to tackle the series of challenges facing the Economic and Business environment of the Nigerian economy.
Dr Olawale Cole spoke on the state of the economy at the First Media briefing of the chambers for the year 2022-2023.
He spoke on issues around the domestic economy, global development exchange rate issues, foreign exchange scarcity, crude oil theft, interest rate hikes, inflation amongst others.
The LCCI boss wants the federal government to sustain its targeted interventions in selected critical sectors like manufacturing, export infrastructure and tackle insecurity.
According to Dr Olawale, the persistent war in Ukraine and high spending by the government on the forthcoming general elections and census will foresee a further rise in inflation rate in the short term.
He reiterated the LCCI’s position on the rising inflation that a rate hike will not tame team the increasing inflation
without complementary targeted financing of critical sectors like agriculture, power, energy, defense.
He added that the federal government must invest more in boosting Supply and cushioning the cost of production through the planned removal of fuel subsidies, which though may cause inflation to rise in the short term but remains the best economic decision
to reduce the country’s unsustainable debts we now carry as a nation.
