The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has again raised the Monetary Policy Rate, MPR, its benchmark interest rate by 200 basis points to 24.75 percent from 22.75 per cent.

Briefing the press on the outcome of the 294th Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja, yesterday, the Governor of CBN, Mr. Olayemi Cardososo, also announced an adjustment of the asymmetric corridor around the MPR   to   +100/-300 basis points

He said that the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) of commercial banks was retained at 45 percent, while the CRR for merchant banks was increased to 14 percent from 10 per cent.    But the   Liquidity Ratio   of banks was left at 30 percent.

Cardoso explained that members of the MPC were faced with continuing with the tightening cycle or a hold to see further impact of last month’s MPR   hike but at the end, after reviewing the balance of risks, it was decided that a further tightening was the way to go.

All valid FX claim cleared

The CBN boss insisted that the backlog of all valid FX transactions had been cleared, adding that security agencies were investigating infractions discovered by the audit firm.

He said:   “We got a reputable audit firm to look into the documents and they did a thorough job and came out to say that a number of these transactions did not qualify.

I have said this before.    In some cases you have allocations of millions of dollars which were never requested.

“You also had cases where there were requests but no Naira backing, yet were allocated foreign exchange.    And the list goes on. Those were some of the infractions.    It was for those reasons that we refused to validate those transactions.