By Chioma Obinagwam
Nigeria’s apex monetary authority, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has left benchmark interest rate– the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) unchanged at 11.5 percent.
Confiance News gathered that the decision was reached at the 279th Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting which ended on Tuesday.
Governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele, noted that a unanimous agreement was reached by all MPC members present at the meeting owing to the fragile recovery of the economy.
Confiance News recalls that headline inflation rate recorded a slight decline year-on-year (y/y) from 18.12 percent in April 2021 from 18.17 percent in March 2021. Also, it recorded a Month-on-Month decline of 0.97 percent in April 2021 from 1.56 percent in March 2021.
Similarly, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) recorded a marginal 0.51 percent improvement in first quarter (Q1) 2021 compared to the 0.11 percent growth in fourth quarter (Q4) 2021.
Due to the unimpressive growth of the economy, other parameters such as the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) remained the same at 27.5 per cent, Liquidity Ratio at 30 percent and the Asymmetric Window of +100 and -700 basis points around the MPR.
Emefiele, however, noted that maintaining the status quo will enable previous policy actions to permeate the economy while keeping an eye on global and domestic developments.
