Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has released meeting calendar for its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) for the new year, dousing speculations the meeting may not hold next week due to the inability of the committee to form a quorum.
According to the MPC Meeting Calendar for 2018, the committee will meet between January 22-23, to take a decision on the next action on the interest rate.
Nigeria's headline inflation slowed for the 11th month in a row in December, to 15.37 percent from 15.90 percent the previous month, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.
Many analysts have suggested a more dovish move by the MPC this year in term of its stronghold on liquidity tightening to create room for easing and ensure that funds are made available to other economic agents in the economy at a cheaper rate.
There have been speculations on a possible postponement of the MPC meeting this month following the depletion of the membership of the committee as a result of the retirement of key members, including two deputy governors of the central bank last year.
The committee which was established under the CBN Act of 2007, was to enable the monetary authority to facilitate the attainment of one of its key objectives of price stability and support the economic policy of the government through experts discussion and decision making and input.
The committee has met regularly every other month and for six times in the year since it was inaugurated under the enabling law. The committee has also taken decision mainly on interest rate and at some point foreign exchange regulation. Since 2016 till date, the committee has chosen to hold the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), which represents the benchmark interest rate in the economy at 14 percent in a bid to tighten liquidity and ensure price stability by curbing speculation on the local currency.
The committee has equally intervened in the foreign exchange regulation at a critical stage when the naira was facing attack from speculation as a result of dollar shortage, bringing sanity to the market.
However, the membership of the committee has been depleted with the retirement of two deputy governors of the CBN since its last meeting in November and the resignation of some independent members that are yet to be replaced by the government.
Although President Buhari has submitted the list of nominees to replace the retired deputy governors and some of the board members of the regulatory bank, the National Assembly is yet to work on the nomination, putting the activity of the committee in abeyance.
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