L
LequteMan
Guest
Doyin Okupe, a former aide of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, has advised Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo to save the Naira, by adopting a crude-oil-swap arrangement.
The arrangement was adopted when Jonathan was president, and saw FG exchange crude oil for refined petroleum products, through third party traders.
This system has been replaced with a direct-sale-direct-purchase of crude oil initiative, by the Muhammadu Buhari administration, eliminating middlemen in the process.
In an open letter to Osinbajo on Thursday, Okupe urged Buhari to return to the crude-swap arrangement.
“Nigeria is nearly totally an import dependent economy, we earned about N4.6 trillion from export of crude oil in 2015, while our total import bill was in the region of about N6 trillion; 30 percent of which was dedicated to the import of petroleum products. Actual figure was about N1.8 trillion or $5bn,” he wrote.
“The current intervention of the CBN, though highly successful, which is based on injecting hard earned forex (to the tune of over $1bn a month) into the forex market through the banks, also grossly reduces the amount of forex inflow from sales of crude oil to the federation account; for sharing by the state and federal govt. The crude oil swap is a better sustainable alternative as it does not affect in any way our revenues from crude oil sales.
“Your Excellency, with all humility, I submit that while the above may not exactly represent the actual details in the suggested transactions, I strongly believe that this proposition of mine, if fine-tuned by experts, will give results with much commendation to your administration and more importantly, improve the strength of our national currency further and relieve some of the current hardship in the nation.”
The arrangement was adopted when Jonathan was president, and saw FG exchange crude oil for refined petroleum products, through third party traders.
This system has been replaced with a direct-sale-direct-purchase of crude oil initiative, by the Muhammadu Buhari administration, eliminating middlemen in the process.
In an open letter to Osinbajo on Thursday, Okupe urged Buhari to return to the crude-swap arrangement.
“Nigeria is nearly totally an import dependent economy, we earned about N4.6 trillion from export of crude oil in 2015, while our total import bill was in the region of about N6 trillion; 30 percent of which was dedicated to the import of petroleum products. Actual figure was about N1.8 trillion or $5bn,” he wrote.
“The current intervention of the CBN, though highly successful, which is based on injecting hard earned forex (to the tune of over $1bn a month) into the forex market through the banks, also grossly reduces the amount of forex inflow from sales of crude oil to the federation account; for sharing by the state and federal govt. The crude oil swap is a better sustainable alternative as it does not affect in any way our revenues from crude oil sales.
“Your Excellency, with all humility, I submit that while the above may not exactly represent the actual details in the suggested transactions, I strongly believe that this proposition of mine, if fine-tuned by experts, will give results with much commendation to your administration and more importantly, improve the strength of our national currency further and relieve some of the current hardship in the nation.”
