No Cause For Alarm Over MPC, Says Emefiele As CBN Retains Benchmark Lending Rate

Godwin Emefiele, Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has allayed fears over to the inability of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to hold its January 2018 Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting.

The meeting scheduled for 22-23 January, will not hold due to the Apex Bank unable to form a quorum as specified in the CBN Act 2007.

This development follows the non-confirmation of the nominees by the Senate.

In a statement released Sunday, Mr Emefiele expressed confidence that in spite of the failure to hold the meeting, “key economy indicators continue to move in the right direction with modest recovery in oil prices and boost in the domestic production”.

Other positive indicators which the Governor identified in the statement include continued decline in inflation to 15.37 per cent, accretion foreign exchange reserves from about US$23 billion in October 2016 to US$40.78 billion as at January 18, 2018.

While reflecting on the investors’ confidence, the Governor further revealed that the recently introduced Investors’ and Exporters’ (I&E) window has raked-in over US$13 billion within the space of nine months.

The positive economic outlook and the foreign exchange inflows have also impacted positively on the capital market which boosted the market capitalization by 22.3 per cent from N13.21 trillion on November 30, 2017 to N16.15 trillion as at January 19, 2018.

Following the absence of the MPC meeting of the MPC decisions, the CBN said it would maintain key monetary variables as decided by the last MPC meeting of November 2017.

The decisions reached last years are as follows: MPR 14.0 per cent, CRR 22.5 per cent, Liquidity Ratio 30.0 per cent and asymmetric corridor between +200 and -500 basis points around the MPR.