CBN Governor Hints of Plans to Restrict Mill Imports
* Says importation gulps $1.5 billion annually
*Insists no change on interest rate now
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emeifele Tuesday said milk importation into the country gulps between $1.2 billion and $1.5billion annually.
Describing this as unacceptable, Emeifele disclosed of plans to restrict importation of milk into the country.
According to him, this was not the best for the country and will not be accepted.
Emeifele also told newsmen in Abuja that the apex bank was not in a hurry to bring down the current interest rate.
He said the apex bank will leave the current rate for a long time.
He said that rather the CBN will come up with other measures such as prescription of minimum loan advance that banks can give to private sector to boost economic growth.
Emeifele said, “ we will like to see inflation trend into single digit territory. That the CBN itself has set an inflation target of between six to nine per cent and because we are still above that threshold, we will only do so cautiously either through signaling; we are not going to be in a hurry to moderate or to bring down the MPR (interest rate).
“However, without necessarily altering or adjusting the MPR, we can take other measures like the measure that we adopted by prescribing minimum loan deposit ratio to the banks.
“That will help in a drive to increase the loans deposit and indeed, because banks themselves know that if they do not do what we want, as raised in the guidelines, we would take the money that they have and put them in CRR and because they know that it is a big challenge for them, that is why the rates are beginning to trend. There is a price war going on now.”
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