The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has called on the Federal Government to handle the issue of electricity pricing with caution, describing the nation’s economy as too fragile to absorb the shocks of a commercial electricty market.

The Centre made this appeal in a statement issued on Sunday and signed by its Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Muda Yusuf.

It described the transition challenges of the states taking up regulatory responsibilities for electricity market, as a another major cause for concerns in 2025, since some of the states, it stated, lacked the capacity to manage such transition.

The Centre also expressed concerns on the huge disparity in profitability between the real economy and the financial economy, as seen in 2024.

It described the huge disparities in the growth of financial services and the rest of the economy, as seen in the first three quarters of 2024, as evidence that the nation’s financial institutions were not playing their financial intermediation role, in the economy effectively.

“The service sector continued to dominate the sectoral growth performance for most part of 2024, with the financial services sector outperforming other sectors with a growth performance of 32 percent, the real sector could only muster a subdued growth of 1.14 percent.

“The implication is that sectors with high job creation potential and prospects for economic inclusion are still struggling. This situation needs to be reversed to fix the current high unemployment and reduce poverty,” it argued.

CPPE also described as not consistent with the nation’s economic aspirations, the present situation, where investment in financial instruments has become much more profitable than investing in the real economy.

On the challenges of productivity and competitiveness of the nation’s non-oil sector, the Centre urged the federal government to address issues such as structural and infrastructural challenges, funding constraints, regulatory issues and the general macroeconomic headwinds.

On survival strategies in Year 2025, the Centre called on business managers and owners to leverage technology to reduce cost and ensure competitiveness, while also advising industries on the need to deepen backward integration to reduce their forex exposure.

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