The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), yesterday, raised the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), which measures interest rate from 16.5 per cent to 17.5 percent to tame inflation, even as economists disagree with the move, citing unaddressed inflation drivers.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, announced this after the apex bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja, noting that decelerating inflation is not enough to halt interest rates just yet.
Specifically, the MPC raised the monetary policy rate by 100 basis points to 17.5 per cent and kept the asymmetric corridor at +100/-700 basis points around the MPR. The MPC retained Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) by 32.5 per cent while liquidity ratio was kept at 30 per cent.
Emefiele said MPC “members welcome the recent deceleration of the year-on-year headline inflation, noting that the persistence in policy rate hike over the last few meetings of the committee have started to yield the expected decline in inflation.”
The CBN…
Source: Guardian Newspaper
