The CBN has been under pressure this year as the economy navigates through what it calls a fragile economy. Based on this every single Monetary Policy Meeting the CBN holds is considered very critical. Investors await its communique containing nearly 2000 words and pour through all of them.
Having read through many of its communique, we have noticed a common feature. There is one word that as featured the most since it held its meetings this year.
The committee has mentioned the word “Growth” several times in its communique this year. Sometimes it mentions growth to demonstrate the current state of affairs or where it hope Nigeria should be. For example in this weeks communique it used the word in this sentence
“The Committee noted that growth had come under severe strains arising from declining private and public expenditures.” It also used it in another sentence saying “Having seen two consecutive quarters of slow growth, the Committee recognized that the economy could slip into recession in 2016 if proactive steps were not taken to revive growth in key sectors of the economy.”
So here is how many times the word growth has been used
| MPC Nos | Date | Growth | Total Words | %age/Total words |
| 99 | 20/1/2015 | 18 | 1945 | 0.93% |
| 100 | 24/3/2015 | 14 | 1964 | 0.71% |
| 101 | 19/5/2015 | 25 | 2408 | 1.04% |
| 102 | 24/6/2015 | 21 | 1880 | 1.12% |
| 103 | 22/9/2015 | 26 | 2310 | 1.13% |
If you are wondering why we had over 2,400 words in the meeting of May, we believe it is perhaps because that was the meeting where it first decided to harmonise CRR. It was also the CRR before the assumption to the presidency by Buhari. The next highest being this month’s is where it agreed to reduce it. It is also the month where Nigeria was kicked out of the JPM index.
