By Valentine Amanze, Online Editor
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has steadied its benchmark lending rate at 11.5 percent.
The apex bank’s Governor Godwin Emefiele, stated this, while also denying that the country was adopting a new foreign exchange management policy.
The rate decision would allow the bank “to deploy liquidity into employment generation and output-stimulating sectors of the economy,” Emefiele said, at a briefing to announce the decision Tuesday.
“This would help consolidate the country’s recovery process,” he said.
The bank cut rates twice last year to try to stimulate an economy that has been hobbled by the COVID-19 pandemic and an oil price crash.
A third of Nigeria’s workforce are now out of work and the economy expanded just 0.11 percent in the fourth quarter. Lower oil receipts have weakened its currency, the naira, and inflation climbed to a four-year peak in February as food prices jumped more than 20 percent.
Few analysts expected the central bank to either raise or lower the 11.5 percent base rate, given Nigeria’s low growth and high inflation.
The governor also addressed reports Nigeria is unifying its foreign exchange rates, which the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization had said should be liberalised.
Nigeria has not changed its foreign exchange management policies, Emefiele said.