The Statistician-General of the Federation, Mr. Simon Harry, has warned that the current fuel crises in Nigeria is capable of creating artificial shock in the economy capable of causing upsets such as varying inflation projections.
Harry who spoke addressed the press in Abuja on Tuesday to announce the January 2022 Consumer Price Index (CPI), said whether Nigeria likes it or not, transport motor owners will take advantage of the situation, and may never return to status quo when the clean petrol arrives.
“As you are bringing your commodities to the market for sale, you will be thinking of adding some amount on the selling costs so that you will be able to recover the costs of transportation. So that gives us a negative signal that is capable of affecting not just inflation rate, but also other macro-economic variables such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and even the unemployment rate.
“I can, however, assure you that certainly, it is not the best for the economy and if we must maintain a stable macroeconomic environment, this kind of crisis certainly is not the best for it is not needed,” the nation’s chief statistician stated.
He opined that the shock may affect a good number of private businesses as they may not be able to run effectively as expected, given that the Nigerian economy is driven by the private sector.
He, however, said that the February inflation rate could not be predicted based on the present fuel crisis as the numbers were still being collected. On the present rate, the statistician-general said that CPI for January was 15.60% from 15.63% recorded in December 2021.
However, on year-on-year basis, it was 0.87 per cent points lower than the rate recorded in January 2021 (16.47) per cent. Harry said that the headline index increased by 1.47 per cent in January, 0.34 per cent points lower than 1.82 per cent recorded in December 2021.
By Chidi Ekpewerechi
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