THE Governor of Abia State, Alex Otti has criticized the naira’s free slide, saying that the Federal Government printed too much money into circulation.
The governor stated this in an interview today with Channels Television’s Politics Today.
“I believe that the major problem we have is financial discipline. We are dealing with an economy where we printed so much money, at the last count, we will be nearing N30 trillion,” he said.
“So what happens with ways and means is that the quantum of goods that you have available in an economy does not increase with the quantity of money that you print.”
During the interview, the governor also stated that the nation’s economy needs to shift from consumption to manufacturing in order to revive it.
He criticized the situation in which Africa’s greatest economy imports almost every goods, maintaining that it puts a lot of pressure on the foreign market.
“The issue of production versus consumption, if the economy must recover, we must move to production.
“That does not necessarily mean we will reduce consumption. What it means is that we will be consuming what we produce, to the extent that we are importing virtually everything. You keep piling pressure on the foreign exchange market,” he said.
