The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has postponed the first Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in 2020. The meeting was initially scheduled to hold on January 20, 2020.
Nairametrics found that the MPC meeting would hold on Thursday and Friday, January 23 and 24, 2020. This was disclosed by the apex bank through its Twitter handle.
“#CBN Shifts January 2020 #MPC meeting: The first meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for 2020, earlier slated to hold on Monday and Tuesday, January 20 and 21, 2020, respectively, has now been rescheduled for Thursday and Friday, January 23 and 24, 2020,” CBN tweeted.
Reasons for the postponement: Though, the CBN didn’t disclose the reason the meeting was rescheduled, it said “regrets any inconvenience this change may have caused its stakeholders and the general public.”
What you need to know: The benchmark interest rate at 13.5% had been held by the CBN since it surprisingly cut it from 14% in March 2019, in order to stimulate growth and signal a new direction. The 2019 rate cut was the first since the 2015 cut by the CBN.
[READ MORE: CBN may announce new recapitalisation plan soon)
But little or no changes might be made in the next Monetary Policy Committee meeting, according to Reuters, as Godwin Emefiele, the Governor of the CBN said it expected the apex bank to maintain its stable exchange rate policy in the medium term and keep monetary policy tight in 2020 to combat inflation which stood at 11.85% last November. This is regarded as the highest rate since April 2018.
The reason for the rise in inflation is attributed to the land border closure by President Muhammadu Buhari. He had ordered the closure without warning and prices of food items jumped.
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Let the border be opened, mint naira. I know minting of money is the last resort. Since things are like this let bring solutions to this inflation.