The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has urged the Federal Government to deploy innovative measures to tackle natural disasters like flooding by implementing environmental guidelines and establishing preventive infrastructure.

LCCI President, Dr Michael Olawale-Cole, said this at the LCCI state of the economy quarterly news conference on Tuesday in Lagos.

Recall that towards the third and fourth quarters of 2022, the country recorded incidences of massive flooding in some areas.

The development led to significant losses running into millions of dollars of investments in farm produce particularly rice, businesses and properties.

Olawale-Cole said the call for innovative solutions was to safeguard Nigeria against impacts of projected uncertainties, confluence of challenges, and economic recession across some regional blocs in 2023.

He noted that the impact of climate change on agriculture had become more evident and quick response was critical to avert food insecurity and worsening food inflation.

“The Federal Government needs to sustain its targeted interventions in selected critical sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, export infrastructure, and security.

“We urge the government to keep track of plans to tackle oil theft, to boost oil exports and earn more foreign exchange even as we commend government’s effort to combat the cartel involved in oil theft,” he said.

The LCCI president noting the excruciating burden of inflation, foreign exchange scarcity, high energy cost, and weakening purchasing power, said many more production activities may be constrained in the coming months.

He stressed that to reduce the shocks from disruptions to supply chains for raw materials and drive industrialisation, manufacturers should be assisted with subsidised input and more foreign exchange allocations to import critical inputs.

“While the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) embarks on monetary tightening to tame inflation, it should ensure that targeted concessionary credit to the private sector is sustained for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME),” he said.

Addressing the country’s 2023 budget, Olawale-Cole said the funding approach must not continue with issuing only debts but equity financing must be considered as an exclusive way of funding budget deficit.

He said that to improve the performance of the 2023 budget, governments at all levels must put actionable policies in place to address the high fuel and food costs as high inflation rate distorted most of the budget assumptions.

He stated that particular attention must be put on more investments in transport infrastructure to resolve the many logistical challenges that had impacted the movement of goods across the nation.

“Looking beyond oil revenues, we can enhance our foreign exchange earnings through the increased inflow of Foreign Direct investments in infrastructure and critical port reforms to reduce the bottlenecks in our export logistics and processes that will boost non-oil production and exports.

“We urge all the budget monitoring agencies to promote more transparency and inclusion in the budget process towards improving the ranking of Nigeria in the open budget index.

“Transparency, oversight, and public participation in the national budgeting process are necessary to boost the confidence of nigerians in the budget process,” he said.