The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has raised the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), which measures interest rates from 16.5% to 17.5 percent.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele announced this in Abuja on Tuesday, January 24, 2023, following the apex bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting.
This is the fifth time the CBN would increase the interest rate.
Emefiele while speaking at the meeting explained that previous rate hikes have already started to moderate inflationary pressures, but the result was not yet good enough to hold or reduce the MPR.
He said: “We are happy that some of these policies that we introduced in the last couple of months in our attempt to rein in inflation are beginning to yield results, not just in plateauing but are beginning to drop.
“But MPC members feel that the 10 basis points drop from 21. 47% to 21.34% is just not good enough as a reason to begin to celebrate.
“We concluded that yes inflation rate was reducing, Year-on-Year, but the other underlining figures have not given us reasons to celebrate, as such we decided to be aggressive in our tightening.”