Barely three months to the end of the current administration, experts have suggested that the incoming administration should focus more on infrastructure development and redirect the fiscal and monetary policies critical to the nation’s economic recovery.

The suggestion is coming on the heels of the current decay in infrastructure, poor economic policies which have put the nation into a spurious debt burden and a huge unemployed population, insecurity, poverty among others.

Today, the price of fuel, food items, and household goods, transportation have all gone up, thereby making life more miserable for the poor in Nigeria.

Speaking to The Guardian yesterday, Professor Uche Uwaleke said the incoming president urgently needs to tackle issues surrounding the fiscal and monetary policies to quickly arrest the dwindling economy of the country.

He said, in the area of fiscal policy, “I expect the new government to move swiftly to deal with the issue of fuel subsidy. This should result in a lot of savings and improve the country’s fiscal position in view of the huge debt burden”.

The Professor of Capital Market at Nasarawa State University, Keffi, further stated that on the monetary front, there is a need to inject more transparency in the forex market through elimination of multiple exchange rates.

“This should have the effect of boosting investors confidence in the economy and attracting foreign investment required to create jobs,’’ he said.

According to him, to make this work, “The first step I expect the new president to take is to have a team of competent people by ensuring that round pegs are put in round holes, I also expect that he should immediately roll out his economic blueprint, which should be in line with the national development plan’’.

Uwaleke explained that central to this economic agenda, the incoming government should ensure that provision of infrastructure is decentralized, especially power and security.

On his part, Prof. Sheriffdeen Tella said that the starting point for the incoming government is to quickly review the implementation of the redesign naira notes adding that it has not only disrupted consumption but also production, particularly in the informal sector.

According to Tella, the disruption has to be addressed quickly to halt the economic decline and hardship on the nation.

“Prior to the currency redesign, the economy has been performing poorly due to the beggar –thy-neighbor nature of the fiscal policy. We were running a rent seeking economy on the one hand and debt dependent economy on the other hand, such economic policies have dragged the country down into both debt trap and poverty entrapment. This economic situation, in itself, requires not just tinkering but massive reengineering, the managers have to recalibrate their thinking from rent seeking to production and productivity ‘’

He explained that the government must shift from deficit budgeting towards cutting “our coats according to the size of our cloth. Fortunately, we expect a new government with better ideas and new modus operandi’’.

“More appropriately however, the country should not turn away from foreign loans and revert to domestic credits which have also been misused by the current government, in economics, we do argue that domestic borrowing is mere transfer of funds from surplus to deficit areas within the economy and it is a tolerable situation, but we also recognize the concept of crowding out, the public and private sectors are competing for funds from the same domestic market’’.