The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has raised the official interest rate by 50 basis points as part of a consistent tightening policy to control inflation in Nigeria.
With the new monetary policy rate increase, the CBN has raised the official interest rate to 18 per cent from 17.5 per cent in January 2023.
The CBN stated that the goal was to keep inflation under control, citing the gains from previous high rates as justification for its new action.
At a press conference on Tuesday to mark the end of March 2023 MPC meeting, the governor of the apex bank, Godwin Emefiele, said that while inflation has remained high, the tightening measures have continued to slow the rate of price increases.
SaharaReproters had reported that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report showed that Nigeria’s headline inflation rate rose to 21.91 per cent in February 2023 from 21.82 per cent recorded in January of the same year.
The NBS report obtained from its website showed that looking at the trend, the February 2023 inflation rate showed an increase of 0.09 per cent points when compared to January 2023 headline inflation rate.
Similarly, the report stated that on a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 6.21 per cent points higher compared to the 15.70 per cent recorded in February 2022, adding that this shows that the headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) increased in February 2023 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., February 2022).
“The contributions of items on a class basis to the increase in the headline index are presented, thus: Bread and Cereal (21.67%), Actual and Imputed Rent (7.74%), Potatoes, Yam and Other Tubers (6.06%), Vegetable (5.44%) and Meat (4.78%).
“On a month-on-month basis, the percentage change in the All-Items Index in February 2023 was 1.71%, which was 0.16% points lower than the rate recorded in January 2023 (1.87%). This means that in February 2023, on average, the general price level was 0.16% lower relative to January 2023,” the report added.
This comes amid the Naira scarcity occasioned by the Naira redesigned policy by the Nigerian government.