Off the wire
• 1st LD Writethru: Gold up for seventh session in row  • Abbas condemns kidnapping of 2 Japanese by IS  • Urgent: U.S. dollar rises amid policy divergence  • Ronaldo confirms break-up with Russian model Irina Shayk  • FMs to meet in Berlin on Ukraine crisis  • Belgian talent Origi confirmed to stay with Lille until end of season  • Urgent: Oil prices plunge as IMF lowers growth forecast  • Senior Iran's military official warns attacks on Israel over general's death in airstrikes  • Disposable income of Latvian households grows 10.6 pct in 2013  • Report: Prices of Soviet-era apartments in Riga down 0.2 pct in December  
You are here: 　 Home

Nigeria retains interest rate at 13 pct

Xinhua, January 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Nigerian government on Tuesday said the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) retained the nation's interest rate at 13 percent.

The committee was of the view that the rate, which was fixed in November 2014, needed time to have the desired impact on the nation's economy, Godwin Emefiele, the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) told reporters in Abuja.

He said the committee observed that its decisions of November 2014 needed some time for the effect to crystallize for the economy and therefore voted to retain the current position.

According to him, all 11 members voted to retain the Monetary Policy Rate at 13 percent and retain the Cash Revenue Ratio (CRR) on private sector deposit at 20 percent.

The apex bank chief told his audience that 11 members also voted to retain the CRR on public sector deposit at 75 percent and retain the liquidity ratio at 30 percent.

Emefiele said the nation's broad money supply grew by 7.29 percent at the end of December 2014.

He said it marked improvement over the 1.32 percent increase in 2013 but was lower than the benchmark of 15.02 percent for 2014.

"During the period, credit to government contracted by 21.8 percent far below the growth benchmark of 28.4 percent," he added.

"similarly, the Net Foreign Asset declined by 15.02 percent, credit to private sector grew by about 12.1 percent, pushing aggregate domestic credit growth of about 11 percent," Emefiele said.

According to him, the committee observed that the bearish conditions in the capital market continued as equities market indicators traded downwards within the period under review.

Emefiel said significant pressure persisted in the foreign exchange market during 2014, resulting in further "weeping' of the naira across the three segments of the market.

The CBN chief told newsmen that the country's external reserves as at end-December 2014 could finance 7.44 months of imports.

He said as at December 2014, inflation rate stood at 8.0 percent, which he said, was within the range of 6.0-9.0 percent benchmark for inflation forecast by the bank.

Emefiele said the National Bureau of Statistics estimated real Gross Domestic Product growth rate at 6.23 percent in the third quarter of 2014 compared with 6.54 percent in the second quarter.

He said the MPC observed the continued dominance of the non-oil sector, particularly services sub-sector, which contributed 2.53 percentage points to the economy. Endi