The Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria on Tuesday retained the Monetary Policy Rate at 11.5 per cent. The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, who disclosed this after the committee’s two-day meeting in Abuja also said all other parameters were retained.

Announcing the committee’s decision, Emefiele said, “The committee thus decided by a unanimous vote to retain the Monetary Policy Rate. In summary, the MPC voted to retain the MPR at 11.5 per cent; retain the asymmetric corridor of +100/-700 basis points around the MPR; retain the CRR at 27.5 per cent; and retain the Liquidity Ratio at 30 per cent.”

The CBN governor noted that available output data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that real Gross Domestic Product grew by 0.51 per cent in the first quarter of 2021, compared with 0.11 and -3.62 per cent in Q4 2020 and Q3 2020, respectively.

He said, “In the view of the MPC, although the economy has succeeded in exiting the recession, the recovery was very fragile, given that the GDP of 0.51 per cent was still far below population growth rate.