Emefiele: Trade dispute between US, China may slow down global economy

By Osaigbovo Iguobaro, Benin

The Nigerian government has predicted that the trade wars between the United States and China may slowdown global economy.
The Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele made the remark while delivering the 3rd eminent lecture series of the University of Benin (UNIBEN).
The lecture was titled, “Beyond the Global Financial Crisis: Monetary Policy Under Global Uncertainty”.
He said except urgent steps were taken to address the brinkmanship over the imposition of tariffs on goods emanating from both countries, global economy outlook becomes uncertain.
The CBN Governor expressed worry that the country might slide back to recession if measures are not taken to tackle the high rate of unemployment.
He said Nigeria has made progress in the year under review but more efforts must be made to reduce the country’s unemployment rate.
“From some of my concluding remarks, you may have observed whether you like it or not, there is global uncertainty that will unfortunately most certainly, lead to another crisis.
“The question could be, how are we as Nigerians, particularly our leaders, I am talking of Monetary and Fiscal Policy Authority, how are we preparing our country for the next set of crisis?
“ We have luckily exited recession, we have seen recession pending downward to about 18.72 percent in 2017 to about 11. 37 percent today.
“We have seen reserve moving up but unfortunately, we still have issues and those issues bothers around unemployment rate and those issues bother around how do we prepare our country.
Giving a brief historical background of the effort made by the CBN to stabilize the nation’s economy, he said the introduction of the Investors and exporters Window has helped in shoring up the country’s external reserves.
He said the turnover in the I&E FX Window has reached over $48 billion since the inception of the Window and that our foreign exchange reserved has risen to $45 billion in April 2019 from $23 billion in October 2016.
The CBN governor added that the Nigeria’s current stock of external reserves is now able to finance nine months of current import commitments.
He said with the improved availability of foreign exchange, the exchange rate at I&E FX Window has remained stable over the past 24 months at an average of N360/$, and the parallel market exchange rate has appreciated from N525/$ in February 2017 to N360/$ today.
The Vice-Chancellor, University of Benin (UNIBEN), Prof. Faraday Orumwense ), said as the world becomes increasingly global, new innovations are being explored to solve problems.
He revealed that the lecture series serves as a means to connect and to continue to rub minds together and brainstorm on how to improve on capacity building of the staff.
He urged the University staff and the students to take the lecture series seriously.