The Chairman, Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, Senator Bassey Otu, has said the recent controversies surrounding the suspension of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, should not distract the bank from effectively discharging its mandate to the people.
A statement by the CBN quoted Otu as saying this during the hearing on the implementation of the 2013 and the presentation of the 2014 operating budget of the central bank.
Otu said, “You have been doing quite alright in terms of performance. The state of the economy has been very challenging. There has been a lot of controversies in recent times linking the central bank. We won’t want it to affect the institution.”
He added, “We want everybody to concentrate and do the work the Nigerian people want you to do. Issues would sort out themselves at appropriate time… but it must not affect the productivity of the institution, the direction and objectives of the institution”.
He called on the CBN to live up to its responsibilities and advised the bank’s officials to remain focused and concentrate on their jobs.
The CBN Deputy Governor, Corporate Services, Alhaji Suleiman Barau, attributed the high budgetary expenditure of 2013 arising from liquidity management to the quantitative easing in the United States and Western European countries, which led to upsurge in foreign portfolio investment inflow by investors who were desirous of taking advantage of the higher yield prevailing in the Nigerian market.
According the Deputy Governor, it was not unlikely, that the pressure on the foreign reserves stemmed from the activities of these foreign investors who want to repatriate their returns on investment.
The CBN had recently commended by the House Committee on Finance for its unequalled record of timely remittances to the Federation Account.
The Chairman, Finance Committee, Dr. Abdul Mumin Jibril, stated that the bank had over the years, been very consistent in its remittances to the Federation Account among government agencies.
Source: Punch
