Of Medium-term Visions and Annual Budgets, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Over the last 57 years, political governance has been a mug’s game. Medium-term visions are used to narcotise the people, while a corrupt and inefficient political and bureaucratic class proceed as usual. For confirmation, look at the process by which the annual budgets are approved. If there is that quality…
Falling Domestic Prices, Alternative Facts, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Whatever the impetus was for price rises last year, when inflation is measured this year against the respective months for 2016, the huge increases in the “base” numbers for this measure would mean that increases this year will appear smaller — barring further structural or secular shocks to prices. This…
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Nigeria and Its Different Way of Getting Things Done, By Uddin Ifeanyi
In the end, two challenges confront us as a people. First, how do we alter our DNA — this is where “we” turn a new leaf? And then how do we change the set of rules by which we have run this space thus far? Interestingly, both of these questions…
The IMF’s 2017 Nigeria Scorecard, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Worse, though, than the fear that the public sector may not optimise additional debt issues is the Fund’s claim that last year, the federal government’s interest payments-to-revenue ratio doubled to 66 percent. I must confess to having looked forward to the publication of details of IMF’s 2017 Article IV Consultation…
Why I’m Not Celebrating the Naira’s Recovery, By Uddin Ifeanyi
In essence, nothing has changed. Managers of our economy have not learnt any lessons from the straitened circumstances we found ourselves in after the bottom fell out of the global oil market in 2014. Everywhere I went last week, talk was all about how the naira was making a remarkable…
What Should the MPC Consider and Then Do?, By Uddin Ifeanyi
In terms, then, of what the MPC must do, the only certainty is the agreement amongst financial markets’ talking heads that it has so far failed in its price stability remit. Domestic prices have moved in spite and because of the apex bank’s riot of policy prescriptions for the economy.…
Making Sense of the National Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Whether, then, our goal is attaining a single digit inflation rate by 2020, or crude oil output of million barrels per day by the same year, the NERGP is credible only if we assume that somehow, managers of this economy will husband our resources differently (better, that is) over the…
Of Water Rights, Subsidies, and Clean Cars, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Across the rights (both access to and use of) are potential casus belli. Water is getting scarcer by the day, as the world’s population, and both its water hunger and waste grow. Recent conversations around how unwashed my vehicle sometimes appears underscored how, even amongst those who ought to know,…
The Naira Fights Back, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Way ahead of questions around the sustainability of current supply levels to the market. The more important question should be: “In the light of our experience with the foreign exchange market over the last two years, is this the most efficient use of scarce foreign exchange?”. Mid-last week, the naira…
A Toast To N700 To a Dollar By Year End, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Accordingly, she factors in a 23 percent movement (down) on the naira’s current exchange rate, which should see the currency close the year at about US$1:N650. Add other risk premiums, including a large one for left-handed monetary policy management and the naira could end the year at circa US$1:N700. The…
