The Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria has called on the Federal Government to design informal sector-oriented economic policy that will help their workers overcome the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Making this call in its economic report for the first quarter of 2020, ABCON noted that while most COVID-19-related government aids and packages were targeted at formal businesses, it was the informal sector that accounted for majority of the workforce that suffered the greatest impact of the pandemic.
Part of the report read, “Nigeria has 41.5 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, accounting for 17.4 million jobs. Most of these MSMEs operate in the informal sector.
“These informal workers suffer disproportionately when large-scale lockdowns are ordered, but at the same time, government aid packages are largely being targeted at formal businesses.
“To ensure that these MSMEs continue to play their critical role in the economy especially employment generation, we recommend that economic policy trust for post-COVID-19 must be designed to reach the informal sector that accounts for a larger percentage of the society.”
Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic represented a wake-up call to the government on the need to support indigent members of the society, ABCON said, “A major lesson to be learned from COVID-19 is the practicability of social security policy in Nigeria.
“Government should be awakened to this prime realisation of the need to support the indigent in the society not only during emergencies but under normal conditions.
“This will consequently reduce a lot of social ills in the society and in the long run cost of crime prevention and management will reduce. This will encourage government to realistically take accurate census and perfect the identification process in the country.”
