Chijioke Ekechukwu, a former Director-General of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has expressed concern over the exchange rate projection of N1,500 to $1 in President Bola Tinubu’s 2025 budget.
Ekechukwu believes the projection implies the administration has no plans to reduce the exchange rate significantly.
On Tuesday, President Tinubu presented a N47.96 trillion national budget for 2025 to the National Assembly, describing it as a tool to consolidate key policies and trigger prosperity for Nigerians.
The budget is based on prevailing economic realities, including the N1,500 to $1 exchange rate, which Ekechukwu finds troubling.
“You know that exchange rate is to tell Nigerians that ‘there is nothing we plan to do that will bring the exchange rate lower,’ because Nigerians are still thinking that probably that rate can come lower than N1500, maybe up to 1000, so there is a problem,” Ekechukwu said on Wednesday in Politics Today On Channels.
“There’s a problem, you know, with that projection, because you are dumping our hopes of a reduction in the exchange rate,” he added.
Ekechukwu also criticized the budget’s oil production target of over two million barrels per day (bpd), calling it unrealistic based on the country’s current production capacity.
“All you’re telling us is, yes, the exchange rate is meant to remain here. And in fact, if you have made such a projection, that means you even expected it to still remain high when you’re talking about the production capacity of our oil,” he stated.
“Yeah, for oil pricing, we already see that it is higher than the market rate at this time.
“But for the production output projection of oil, we are seeing over two million barrels. Two million barrels per day is going to be a far cry.
“Because if you consider where we are today, we haven’t seen that which is going to change or increase the production of oil to take it to 2 million barrels a day.”
