Richard Montgomery, the British high commissioner to
Nigeria, says Tinubu’s “big economic decisions are being noticed” globally.
Montgomery spoke on Wednesday during a visit to
Vice-President Kashim Shettima at the presidential villa in Abuja.
Tinubu recently introduced some reforms in the oil and gas
and financial sectors believed to be critical for redirecting the nation’s
economy out of the woods.
The president, had on May 29, scrapped the petrol subsidy
payments, sending shock waves across the country. The unification of the
foreign exchange markets and the relaxing of restrictions on domiciliary
accounts quickly followed.
So far, international bigwigs have lauded the policies,
including David Malpass, ex-World Bank president, who said the reforms were
important in curbing corruption.
Likewise, Montgomery thinks the subsidy removal and exchange
rate reforms would create better investment opportunities for the country.
“The big economic decisions being taken by this government
are really important and are being noticed around the world,” the UK envoy
said.
“The removal of
subsidy; the exchange rate reform, all of that create a much better investment
environment.
“We know that there are tough times that are going on at the
moment, inflation and unemployment.
“The vice-president and I also touched on some of the
measures that might be possible to cushion the blow of some of these economic
pressures.
“But I think the big issue is that these reforms help put
Nigeria on a higher growth path; they will attract more investments and the UK
and the city of London see Nigeria as a big opportunity going forward.”
Montgomery said Nigeria and the UK have established
partnerships in many areas of common interest.
The envoy said he discussed the long-standing partnership
between the UK and Nigeria.
“We have many areas of shared interest, including a good
history of development cooperation,” NAN quoted Montgomery as saying.
“Some excellent trade and investment arrangements, and we
have also had some good cooperation on security and defence.
“As many of you were
seeing from recent talks, we also had good talks on home affairs and justice
and we have great people-to-people links that means education.
“We also discussed a number of issues to do with how we can
improve our relationships in the future.
“I think we already
have a good economic dialogue, but I think there is a great potential to do
more; as I discussed with the vice-president.
“I will be doing my part to try to boost those, enhance
trade and investment.’’
‘NIGERIANS MAKE UP
10% OF VISITORS COMING TO UK’
Speaking on the recent British policy on students’ visa, he
said the UK granted three million new visas in 2022.
According to Montgomery, 325,000 of the visas granted were
between Nigeria and UK, adding that the restriction on bringing dependents was
also directed to many other countries.
“So, Nigerian visitors constitute over 10 percent of the
people coming to London and the UK,” he said.
“On the issue of students’ visas, I will also like to
provide the context that the number of Nigerian students coming to the UK has
increased five-fold in the last three years.
“It is a fantastic success story for our universities and we
are really delighted that so many Nigerians are coming to the UK.
“I think there are two issues here; the first is: it is not
always possible to find housing services to meet all the needs of all our
existing student population.
“Secondly, I think reasonable people will accept that we have to manage our visitor numbers
and that we have to manage migration in and out of the UK; just as the Nigerian
government does for your own borders.”
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