The Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), has identified dwindling input and forex scarcity (fx), as parts of the factors that are adversely impacting businesses in the country.
Addressing journalists during a media parley in Lagos, Director-General of NECA, Adewale Oyerinde expressed an opinion that for businesses to grow in the country, they must have critical inputs in the context of raw materials, finance, and a stable environment.
According to the NECA chief, businesses also need a hospitable regulatory framework or environment to flourish.
“The issue of input has become a challenge to most businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector. We must import inputs and because importation requires forex, the unavailability of forex becomes a major challenge. And even when forex is available, you can’t get the quantum of forex that you need to import sufficiently from the official market,” he explained.
Oyerinde, while lamenting that manufacturers had to approach the black market before they could have access to forex, which leaves them to pay double of what they had budgeted for production expenses, noted that there was confusion about fiscal and monetary policies as different authorities, especially between the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the ministry of finance.
He argued that instead of the country’s authorities working in synergy, they were issuing contradictory fiscal and monetary policies, as he maintained that investors would not invest in an economy and environment that is unstable with varying uncertainties.
“An investor that wants to invest will look for an environment that is stable. Where you can sufficiently predict that if I commit this to this project or business, this will be the likely outcome but the moment those uncertainties are there, then you start second-guessing, if you should invest or not,” Oyerinde explained.
“Consistently summoning CEOs for investigative activities, we believe that is distractive,” he explained.
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