Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has reiterated the need to integrate youths into plan for financial inclusion in the system. This was noted by the CBN Deputy Governor, Economic Policy, Dr Sarah Alade, yesterday, during the school mentoring programme at Community Staff Secondary School, Asokoro, Abuja.

The programme was part of activities for the 2016 Global Money week.

Dr Alade, who was represented by the CBN Director, Financial Market, Emmanuel Ukeje, said that capturing young ones to financial inclusion will help them to be focused in life and also imbibe the culture of savings.

According to him, “money earned or saved should be placed in financial institution or invested by buying shares. A bank is a financial institution that helps people to grow their money”. The rule of investment is that, the higher the risk involved, the rate of returns; the longer the period of investment the higher the interest rate, he said.

Ukeje said that saving culture will help to achieve financial goals, and that makes it imperative that saving culture should be imbibed by the young ones so that when they grow it would not be a difficult thing to practice.

Speaking on the calls for the devaluation of the Nigerian currency, Ukeje said that the argument for the devaluation of the currency cannot hold water because the country has only crude oil export as the only source of generating foreign exchange. He said that devaluation of the currency can only become necessary when many economic activities are obtained that would spur export.

“The benefit of devaluation is that it makes locally produced goods cheaper to drive export. But in the Nigerian situation, there is overdependence on export of oil as the source of foreign exchange. The problem is that devaluation of the currency would not make any difference because price of oil is rather determined by external forces.”

Ukeje suggested that the Nigerian currency can only get value by citizens engaging in massive production of goods for export so that sources of foreign exchange can be diversified. He also suggested that the country can develop the culture of consuming locally made goods so as to reduce the level of import dependence economy with a multiplier effect of conserving the foreign exchange.

“Nigerians can develop penchant for consumption of locally made goods in order to reduce importation of foreign products. Since we cannot print dollar, we can only earn it by producing goods that can be exported to earn foreign currency,” he said. (Nigerian Pilot)

•Photo shows CBN Deputy Governor, Sarah Alade.

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