By Bimbola Oyesola
Organised labour yesterday commended the recent measures of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) aimed at shoring up the value of the Naira.
The Naira recently reversed its depreciation trend in the parallel market, recording N20 gain against the United States Dollar, closing at N470 per dollar due to what observers attributed to the new rules introduced by the CBN, which allowed beneficiaries of diaspora remittances and foreign exchange (forex) transfers into domiciliary account, and collect the proceeds in foreign currency cash.
Speaking at a one- day interactive session with stakeholders on the five-year policy trust of the apex Bank in Kaduna at the weekend, Vice President of Industriall Global Union, Issa Aremu, hailed the CBN’s Monetary Policy Committee ( MPC) for resisting the pressure to benchmark the real value of Naira with what he called “speculative parallel market rates”. The labour leader who described currency devaluation in a developing economy as “false economics” observed that Naira’s worth was better determined by “market fundamentals” aimed at driving growth and development protecting wage income rather than satisfying “the insatiable urge of currency speculators for unearned profits on the streets”.
He said Nigeria depends on imported inputs for industrial production adding that ‘unmanaged exchange rates” and attendant devaluation would further increase the cost of production, depress wages, making the country uncompetitive and economic recovery intractable.