Yemisi Izuora
The Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele has offered explanation as to why the the January 2018 Monetary Policy Meeting, MPC, did not hold as earlier scheduled.
The major reason according to Emefiele is because MPC lacked the statutory quorum as specified in the CBN Act 2007.
This development has arisen from non-confirmation of the nominees by the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Mr Emefiele however, 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.
Meanwhile, the CBN has indicated that in the absence of the meeting of the MPC decisions, the Bank would maintain “key monetary variables as decided by the last MPC meeting of November 2017 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.