The Nigerian economy is expected to grow to 2.38% in the last quarter of 2019, says the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
According to the Deputy Director, Financial Policy and Regulation Department CBN, Dr Hassan Mahmoud, at the 2019 workshop for financial journalists sponsored by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), disclosed that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would improve from the 2.28% recorded in the third quarter 2019, Vanguard reported.
“If you are looking at the 1.1% that we did in 2015/2016, and 2.28 per cent that we did in the third quarter of 2019, we will see that we have really moved substantially. It is difficult to sustain positive rate GDP growth rates that we are projecting that by the fourth quarter of 2019. We are going to be doing 2.38% that is CBN projection, the IMF is projecting the same growth of 3.31%.”
Perhaps in a bid to drive the economy to increased growth, the CBN is reportedly proposing to increase Loan to Deposit Ratio from 65% to 70%, as earlier published on Nairametrics.
Meanwhile, addressing the issue of the comprehensive gap between lending and saving rates of banks, the CBN stated that it all depends on the customers’ negotiation skills. It added that it is, however, the responsibility of the Central bank and National Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) to ensure that customers are not ripped off by the excesses of banks. Mr Mahmoud disclosed that the CBN was developing ways to discontinue the trend.
[READ MORE: CBN: Unconventional monetary policies needed to grow and diversify the economy]
However, Mahmoud commended the permanence of some fixed income instruments in the financial market, saying that their yield rates had improved, though yield rates on treasury bills had dropped to as low as 8% of recent.
On pension funds, he said the stock had increased to about N9 trillion of which the bulk could be invested in non-risky assets.
Actually the movement of GDP to 2.38% is very slow in a country like Nigeria