The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has said that the real drivers of inflation in the country are increasing cost of production, high importation cost due to depreciation of the Naira and paucity of foreign exchange, forex, among other factors.

Director General of MAN, Mr. Segun Ajayi-Kadir stated that redesigning the naira and sucking in the currency outside banks (CoB) may not have any significant effect on inflation as desired by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

He noted that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) attributed the rise in headline inflation in January to the disruption in the supply of food products, increases in import cost due to the depreciation of the Naira and a pervasive increase in the cost of production.

He said that there is the need to address the real issues that fuel inflation by prioritizing the allocation of forex to the manufacturing sector, expand and deepen special funding windows for the real sector and decisively addressing the issue of insecurity so that we can curb food inflation.