- Obama hails exchange rate flexibility at talks with Buhari
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday retained the Monetary Policy Rate, which is the benchmark lending rate, at the current 14 per cent.
The decision to leave the rate unchanged was contrary to expectations of economic analysts, manufacturers and some government officials.
Indeed, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, had on Monday said there was a need for the apex bank to lower interest rates so that the government could borrow domestically to boost the economy without increasing debt servicing costs. But addressing journalists at the end of the two-day MPC meeting, which was held at the central bank headquarters in Abuja, the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said the apex bank decided to hold the lending rate in order to maintain its primary objective of price stability.
He also said the decision was unanimously agreed on by all the 10 members of the committee who attended the meeting. Apart from the MPR, he said members of the committee also left the Cash Reserve Ratio and the Liquidity Ratio unchanged at 22.5 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively.
The MPC also called on the Federal Government to introduce tax incentives to stimulate activities and return the economy to the path of growth. Emefiele said the Federal Government should toe the line of other developed countries such as the United States that adjusted its tax policy during the period of economic recession to stimulate consumer demand.
For instance, he said the government should consider reducing the tax burden on the low and middle-income earners, while increasing the rates payable by the rich. He said, “In the United States and other economies, when you have situations like this, there are those who are naturally vulnerable – the weak, the low and middle-income people. What the government can do is to reduce their tax rates; and for the rich, increase their tax rates so that they can pay more, and this balances out.
“In fact, you can increase more for the high-income earners so that the disposable income for the poor and vulnerable, and middle-income earners can increase so that they can pump liquidity and use it to boost consumption spending.”
Emefiele said the MPC considered the numerous calls for rate reduction but came to the conclusion that the greatest challenge to the economy at the moment remained incomplete fiscal reforms, which raise costs, risks and uncertainty.
The CBN governor said the committee was of the view that in the past when the rates were reduced to achieve these objectives, it was later discovered that rather than deploy the available liquidity to provide credit to agriculture and manufacturing sectors, it provided opportunities for lending to traders who deployed the same liquidity in putting pressure on the foreign exchange market.
This, he lamented, resulted into limited supply of foreign exchange, thus pushing up the exchange rate. He, however, lamented that the purpose for which the funds were deployed by the banks was not in line with the objective of the CBN. He said, “Both the monetary and fiscal authorities all have the intention to achieve growth, but the direction through which we want to achieve it may differ for as long as you still achieve the growth.
“The issues here are that when you say reduce interest rates, there are two possibilities here. Firstly, you are saying that because you want it to spur credit to the private sector at lower rate. Secondly, which I have heard the fiscal authority talk about, is that they need to be able to borrow at lower rates to spend.
“Our own view at the MPC, which was exhaustively discussed, is that in the past, there was a time when the MPC took the decision to reduce the policy rate and the cash reserves. These were intended to lower rate and encourage spending to the private sector. After we did that, the following meeting we said because we did not see the impact of credit to the private sector that we needed to further reduce the CRR.”
Responding to a question that the decision to hold the benchmark interest rate was against the call by Adeosun to reduce it, the governor said that borrowing at lower rates to spend on consumption in an economy not backed by industrial capacity would further fuel inflation. He said while the committee agreed that it was expected to stimulate growth through aggressive spending, doing so without corresponding efforts to boost industrial output by taking actions to deepen foreign exchange supply for raw materials would not help reduce unemployment.
Emefiele said, “The second part of it is that when you lower the interest rate, it will make it possible for the fiscal authorities to borrow at lower rates. “But we are saying fine. If you borrow at lower rates to stimulate spending, what that does is that it simulate demand for goods, but when you stimulate demand for goods by providing cash or money to be spent without taking action to boost industrial capacity, manufacturing capacity and output, what happens is that you will see a situation where too much money will be chasing too few goods, which will worsen the inflationary conditions that we have now.
“And that is why we are saying that the option that we would like to adopt is while the fiscal authority is going ahead to spend, what we want to do is to retain the rates where they are so that that will again encourage the inflow of capital, because between July and now, we have seen the inflow of above $1bn.”
The governor also said that the CBN would continue to monitor the sale of forex to the BDCs, adding that any bank undermining the integrity of the foreign exchange market would be sanctioned in line with current guidelines.
In the meantime, United States President Barack Obama yesterday praised President Muhammadu Buhari for allowing flexibility in exchange rates.
He spoke during a meeting of the two leaders on the sideline of the 71 United Nations’ General Assembly in New York.
They also discussed ways of countering the Boko Haram militant group.
Details of the meeting were yet to be made available last night.
President Buhari also said yesterday that the anti-corruption campaign of his administration and the economic programme of diversification will significantly address the lack of job opportunities and deprivation that make Nigerian youths vulnerable to recruitment by human traffickers.
He spoke at a meeting on Modern Slavery, hosted by British Prime Minister Theresa May on the margins of the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA71).
He commended the British Prime Minister for drawing the attention of the international community to such a serious matter to coincide with a time that the global focus is on migration and refugee crisis.
He called for practical and innovative measures to address all modern day human tragedies.
Punch with additional report from Nation
