By Modupe Gbadeyanka
For the seventh time, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday, September 26, 2017, announced retaining the benchmark interest rate as 14 percent.
This information was made known to newsmen in Abuja by the CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, after the apex bank’s two-day Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, which ended today.
Explaining the reason behind this, Mr Emefiele said the decision was based on the need to maintain consistency in the growth of the economy.
Earlier this month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 0.55 percent in the second quarter of this year, pulling the Africa’s largest economy out of recession it slipped into last year.
According to the CBN Governor, the council decided to leave the existing cash reserve ratios for commercial banks at 22.5 percent, while the liquidity ratio was left at 30 percent, and the asymmetry corridor was maintained at +200 and -500 basis point.