The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN),
Godwin Emefiele, has disclosed that there is an ongoing talks between the
Federal Government and China to enable the Asian country import some of its own
requirements from Nigeria.
The CBN boss noted that the development would help
to reduce the deficit in trading between the two countries drastically.
Speaking at a press conference at the World Bank
headquarters in Washington, on the last day of the 2016 World Bank/IMF spring
meeting, Emefiele also said part of Nigeria’s deal with China was that the
country became the Asian country’s trading hub in West Africa.
His words, “China has appointed South Africa as its
trading hub for Remnibi transactions in the South African region, has appointed
Kenya as its trading hub for East and Central Africa.
“And Nigeria, the mandate that we signed is for us
to be appointed as the trading hub in West African. In all, we expect that it
is going to be mutually beneficial.
“We are talking to China so that it would also be
importing some of its items from Nigeria, so that the trading balance can be
sort of reduced.
“Will Nigeria benefit from this? I want to say
categorically that Nigeria benefits from this. It’s less pressure on the dollar
and consequently on our reserves.”
Emefiele added that the CBN could not continue with
indeterminate adjustment (devaluation) of the currency, without taking
necessary structural reforms.
“For the first time, we are taking structural
reforms seriously in the country. We’ve always talked about, when you do an
adjustment, follow it up with structural reforms.
“But we are saying this time we’ve done an
adjustment and we are following it up with structural reform, where we are
saying we must diversify the economy away from depending on oil.
“I’ve said it that we have seen people who are
coming in an investing. During the china trip, we saw people who said they can
now come in instead of exporting those items into Nigeria, they can now bring
those plants into Nigeria and begin to produce those things in Nigeria because
our climate is good.”
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