A total of N1.85 trillion was spent by Nigeria on import food for nine months during the closure of international land borders last year, President Muhammadu Buhari’s chief economic adviser, Dr Doyon Salami, has said.

He said this was an indication that the nation lacked the capacity to feed itself.

Salami, an ex-member of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), is the Chairman of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council.

He spoke at the presentation of the National Economic Outlook for 2021 organised virtually by the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) on Tuesday in Lagos.

He said, “Despite border closure, our national import of food amounted to N1.85 trillion between January and Sept 2020 – a 62 per cent increase when compared to same period 2019. This suggests a weakness in our ability to feed ourselves and raises the need to consider review of intervention policies in agriculture.”

He said agriculture had continued to decelerate, growing at 1.7 per cent year-to-date while consumer-sensitive sectors like manufacturing and distribution continue to contract, in double digits.

According to him, serious climatic concerns are undermining agricultural output with 2.5 million farmers being impacted by flooding in 2019.

He noted that preliminary assessments suggested that 2020 was worse with persistence into 2021 to adversely affect output and food prices.

Salami said during the period, Nigeria’s cumulative trade deficit amounts to N4.6 trillion ($12 billion).

He said Nigeria’s external imbalances were increasingly precarious, with continuing concern over exchange rate differentials.

He said uncertainty around foreign exchange – convergence, market-reflective rates and transparent determination mechanism, balance of payment imbalances were large and would remain key questions in 2021.

Salami said by the measure driving the value of the naira based on the naira/dollar inflation differential, the currency, should be trading around N439/$ at the official market.

The agricultural sector, ICT,  real estate and oil and gas are vulnerable to a probable major adjustment to the foreign exchange rate, according to him.

Salami said official payment data showed that about $30 billion (almost 10 per cent of national economy) was obtained from sources outside the CBN, adding that the gap between the official and other exchange rates was a source for concern.

He said the COVID-19 shock of 2020 represented the third major shock to the Nigerian economy in 12 years.

He noted that ahead of the crisis, the Nigerian economy was contending with a set of pre-existing conditions such as macro Instability, stagflation – slow growth and rising inflation, pressure on households – in the form of rising inflation, unemployment, and poverty and pressure on corporate(s) margins – weak consumer and cost pressures.

He said there were also growing fiscal and external imbalances, monetary Policy distortions – the bifurcation of sovereign instruments leading to a distortion of the interest rate term structure.

Salami stated that with the impact of COVID-19, prices continued to rise – at the end of November 2020, overall inflation was 14.8 per cent with food prices increasing at 18.3 per cent when compared with November, 2019.

He, however, noted that the stay-at-home imposition implied greater use of telco/tech communication platforms.

“A health crisis morphed into an economic crisis resulting in humanitarian and in some cases, security challenges, a global development visiting great disruption to established norms – largely negative short-term impact but some positives – especially with technology deployment, the full impact of which will manifest in the years ahead,” he stated.

The international economic environment, he said, deteriorated sharply last year but recovery expected in this year, based on the capacity to suppress the virus through vaccination.

He also said transport and hospitality sectors were gravely affected by the lockdowns of April/May as well as by voluntary containment measures and/or imposed restrictions post-lockdown.

President/Chairman CIBN, Mr Bayo Olugbemi, represented by second Vice President Prof. Pius Olanrewaju, said the National Economic Outlook initiated in 2014 was designed to bring together relevant stakeholders together to discuss emerging and pertinent issues facing national and global economies and their implications for businesses.