The two-day meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria will start on Monday and go through Tuesday, May 19 and 20, 2025.
The CBN’s top decision-making body, the MPC, will have to choose between keeping the interest rate at 27.50 percent and tightening its monetary policy.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics’ consumer price index report, which was made public last Thursday, Nigeria’s inflation rate decreased to 23.7% in April.
The financial expert’s position that the MPC would maintain monetary policy parameters, such as the interest rate at 27.50, was influenced by the country’s declining inflation.
Also, official Nigeria’s currency rate statistics from the Central Bank of Nigeria showed that the naira was at N1,598.72 per dollar but N1,635 at the parallel foreign exchange market on Friday last week.
No question, Nigeria’s current economic position portends a harsh tax on MPC members.
Muda Yusuf, a prominent economist and the CEO of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, asserts that the MPC need to rule out tightening monetary policy.
He clarified that the interest rate in the nation is already too high to be raised any higher.
Since the rates are already quite high, the cash reserve ratio is already 50%, the highest in the world, and the MPR is already 27.5, one of the highest in the world, I don’t think the tightening option should be considered for the time being.
“The asymmetric corridor is +500 basis points around the MPR, and it is also very high because the MPR itself can rise as high as 32.5 when you look at the asymmetric corridor of 500 basis points.
That’s the meaning of it. Therefore, he said, “I don’t think we need to look at the turnoff for that because the rates are already on the high side.”
According to OHAFIATV, the MPC put interest rates on hold in February.
This comes after CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso stated that he would continue to combat the nation’s inflation by using traditional methods.
