The truth and facts about the Naira Dollar free fall.

THE TRUTH AND FACT ABOUT THE NAIRA DOLLAR FREE FALL IN SUMMARY by ogbenna ugochukwu (read & share) The truth and fact to know is that the naira has never had any value (compared to the dollar for about 30 years now). What has been happening since the late 80's (during IBB's regime) is that local production started dwindling and importation of finished products started surging up. Since the country was making huge money from crude oil sales, it was easy for them to always strengthen the value of the naira against the dollar from the external reserve. This lazy approach continued over the years unchecked ignoring the fact that oil price could crash. During the 2008 world economic meltdown (global recession), the external reserve grown by obasanjo was used to withstand the shock on the naira. It's quite unfortunate that the external reserve was hugely depleted over the past six years and about the same time, the global price of crude oil crashed by more than 100%. But in the actual sense, is the external reserve of a country the right source to give its currency value? capital no is the answer. It could be likened to an athlete who performs exceptionally well with steroids while a true athlete performs exceptionally well in their pure natural state. You can agree with me that drugs are not allowed as a performance enhancer in athletics. The only credible way to re-invigorate the naira is to commence an extensive and aggressive local production of products that we always demand foreign exchange to purchase abroad, and that we can see the Buhari's led FG is rightly laying the foundation. The liberalization of the exchange rate has really shown the actual value of the naira. The naira in actual sense had no value against the dollar for about three decades now which shows that we have been operating an illusory economy (the more you look, the less you see) all these while. Like prof Pat Utomi rightly said recently that the crash in crude oil price and the free fall of naira should not be seen from the negative perspective but rather a blessing to us in the sense that it is a wake up call to seek other ways to grow our economy away from oil. We recently learnt that the gold deposit in the north can match that of south Africa if mined optimally. A country's gold reserve is one of the greatest assets it can have to always come out of recession. With the latest discovery of Nickel in the north as well as other solid minerals that are now being given attention, we can be rest assured that brighter days awaits the country. Agriculture for sure is also being given the adequate attention by the current Buhari led FG. In conclusion, bear it in mind that petroleum products importation consumes more than 50% of our foreign exchange and it is expected that once Dangote's refinery in Lagos starts refining sometime in 2018, our foreign reserve will experience about 50% growth which translates to about 50% less demand for dollars. The naira yuan deal is still in progress, but you have to know that such diplomatic deals takes some time before the processes are concluded and comes into effect. It's part of FG measure to reduce over dependence on the dollar on a lasting solution basis. If you are into local production of goods, you can check the Bank of Industry for loan with this link https://www.boi.ng/apply/register Only increased local production and exportation with much reduced rate of importation will give our naira the true value it deserves.