The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, assured Nigerians on Sunday that food prices will decrease in the coming months due to increased agricultural output.
“We can expect that food prices will come down and food availability will increase,” Edun stated.
He acknowledged that food insecurity is a global issue but highlighted the government’s special funding for infrastructure aimed at boosting agricultural production through the provision of seeds, fertilizers, and other necessary resources.
Edun emphasized that both the dry season and wet season harvests would help reduce food inflation.
“Inflation, yes, it is high at 33.65%, food inflation at 40.5% is worrisomely high but the fact is that inflation is coming down, month-on-month. It is slowing and it is expected to reduce as we continue the dry season harvest and then we go into the wet season harvest. That is the place to focus on and a lot of emphasis is being placed on that to get agriculture output up, to get prices down, and that will be a big factor in bringing down inflation,” he explained.
Recent weeks have seen food and basic commodity prices soar, exacerbating the economic crisis triggered by the government’s policies of petrol subsidy removal and forex window unification.
Edun also mentioned the government’s efforts to improve the economic and investment climate to attract more multinationals to Nigeria.
“One of the major drawbacks one of the major impediments for them [exiting multinationals] was they did not have a liquid foreign exchange market. Now, we have a willing buyer, willing seller foreign exchange market. It is elevated, maybe not at the levels we would like it to be but it is when you get inflation down that you can stabilize the exchange rate and even get it coming down similarly with the interest rate. That fight is on. It is an improved environment for them, for big investors as a whole,” Edun said.
He also highlighted recent executive orders signed by President Bola Tinubu, which have improved the investment climate for Nigeria’s abundant gas resources.
“Companies will always come and go, of course, our aim is to not only keep them but to have them even more coming to invest, and we are sure that with the environment that we put in place, they would come,” he added.
Edun mentioned that proposals to ease operations for both local and foreign manufacturers are included in an Economic Stabilisation Package currently before the President.
“We are in a difficult place but the direction of travel is towards improvement. So, every single day, every single month, we are looking at an improved economic situation for Nigeria,” he noted.
Amid Nigeria’s ongoing economic challenges, several manufacturing companies, including the makers of Huggies and Kotex brands, Kimberly-Clark, and others like Procter and Gamble (P&G), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Unilever, and Sanofi-Aventi Nigeria, have exited the country citing high energy costs and currency depreciation.
On the issue of a new minimum wage, Edun acknowledged the complexity of the process but expressed optimism for a favorable outcome.
“It is difficult because the worker deserves his wage and given what is going on, they deserve a change and in fact, by law, every five years, and maybe, we shouldn’t have to wait five years every time to set a new wage scale. The fact is that by law, it is a minimum wage,” he explained.
He continued, “So, you are not setting a wage for Federal Government workers, for example. In a Federation, you are setting a minimum figure that states must pay, that local governments must pay, that the private sector must pay, that small businesses must pay. It is a fixed figure, not a scale. So, there are elements of how we have set the minimum wage in the past, particularly what we called the consequential adjustment, which, given what Labour is asking today, will be unaffordable across the board.”
Edun concluded by emphasizing the importance of affordability and considering alternative ways to support workers’ cost of living beyond wage increases.
