2025 Budget: Tinubu Warns Nigerians $1 can’t go below N1500 – Ekechukwu

The 2025 budget estimate on the exchange rate of N1,500 to $1, according to Chijioke Ekechukwu, a former director-general of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry, indicates that the Tinubu administration is telling Nigerians that there is nothing it can do to decrease the exchange rate.

President Tinubu gave the National Assembly’s joint session of lawmakers a national budget of N47.96 trillion for 2025 on Tuesday.

If followed exactly, he added, the budget, which was created based on economic realities, will propel Nigerians’ prosperity in 2025 and restore and strengthen the country’s main policies.

Ekechukwu finds it concerning that the exchange rate is predicted to be N1500 to $1 in Tinubu’s appropriation bill.

There is a problem, he added on Channels Television, “because Nigerians are still thinking that probably that rate can come lower than N1500, maybe up to 1000, so there is nothing we plan to do that will bring the exchange rate lower.”

You see, there’s a problem with that projection since it dashes our hopes for a decline in the exchange rate.

“You’re just saying that the exchange rate is supposed to stay this way. Actually, if you have produced such an estimate, it indicates that you even anticipated it to stay high when discussing our oil’s production capacity.

Indeed, we can already observe that the price of oil is currently greater than the market rate.

However, we are anticipating more over two million barrels of oil production. It will be a long way off to have two million barrels per day.

Because if you look at where we are right now, we haven’t seen anything that will alter or boost oil output to reach two million barrels per day.

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However, we have already stated that ambition is a positive thing. Perhaps they have knowledge that we do not, and they have not disclosed it to us. However, that is extremely ambitious if it is only what we have observed on the ground.

“Yes, that can be accomplished in the next two or three years, but I believe it’s a bit ambitious to do so in 2025.

“The currency rate is concerning. Another extremely ambitious one is the inflation rate. You are currently unable to reach that 15% exchange rate.

15% given the current rate of inflation and the pricing of petroleum products. Since both of them are still high, you will first question, “What are those things that are the drivers of the inflation rate?”

What else will bring it down, then? Insecurity is the third one. It remains. What, therefore, is the invisible factor that will cause it to drop to 15%?

“And for that reason, I stated that one is nearly impossible to accomplish,” he continued.