BENIN CITY – The Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele has said that the federal government has adopted the unconventional monetary policy to grow and diversify the nation’s economy.

Emefiele stated this at Edo University Iyamho, Edo, while delivering the first convocation lecture titled the role of economic monitoring policy towards development of Nigeria.

He said the federal government has to think outside the box and come up with the unconventional monetary policies as conventional tools were unable to address constraint to economic growth, noting that during the 2008 to 2009 global financial crisis, the policy help the USA and some European countries recovered their economy from the global recession.

He noted that the policy requires encouraging local production by imposing high tarrif and levies on imported goods so that local production, especially farming can grow.

“That is why we closed our borders so that goods can not be smuggled into the country to grow our industries and farmers can continue to produce. People criticise us for closing the borders but that is what we need to do to grow and diversify the economy from oil and encourage agriculture”

According to him, “Cameroun encouraged their people to imports goods by reducing tarrif on imported goods from 10 percent to zero percent and Benin Republic reduced tarrif from 35 percent to 7 and this good are all coming to Nigeria and our local producers cannot sell their produce,”

Emefiele said the Anchor borrower programme has helped to bolster agricultural production by removing obstacles faced by small holders farmers.

He noted that CBN as manager of economic policy in the country have the responsibility of protecting the local production, and creating employment, especially in the rural area.

“Today our unconventional methods have been able to optimally balance the delicate objectives of price stability and real output growth. Our overall aim remains the concurrent attainment of price stability, real growth, full employment and poverty reduction,”

According to him, “we can improve productivity in the agriculture and manufacturing by reducing our over dependence on proceeds from crude oil”

He revealed that Edo state has been a major beneficiary of the CBN monetary programmes as it can generate over 200, 000 jobs and millions of dollars in foreign exchange from supporting cultivation and processing of palm oil adding that following the intervention with palm oil producers, annual production of palm oil in Edo state alone would be in the realm of 350, 000MT.