The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, is highly elated about the International Monetary Fund’s support for the tightening of monetary policies in recent months.
Although, for many Nigerians the fiscal policy, especially the one on Naira notes withdrawal from circulation, was too tight.
But Governor Emefiele told journalists it was a delight to the IMF on the sidelines of the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC, US which ended on Sunday.
The CBN governor said: “We are delighted that the IMF would, among all the countries in Africa, say that the growth in Nigeria should be retained at 3.2%. It gladdens our heart.
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“It means we are doing certain things right, and we’ll continue to do those things that are right.
“But it also means that we are not going to remove our eyes on monetary policy, which is to focus extensively on how to moderate inflation.
“So, the focus remains that monetary policy and monetary authorities must continue to focus on inflation so as to continue to bring it down.
“While monetary authorities are doing their work, to bring down inflation, they must also keep their eyes on banking systems’ stability, through monitoring, supervision, and regulatory frameworks and the rest of them”.
Commenting on the Spring Meetings which ended over the weekend, Emefiele noted that the focus of gathering stakeholders from across the globe was to proffer solutions on how to address the rising poverty and food crisis occasioned by high global inflation.
High Debt Level
“The forecast at the meeting remains that; yes, a lot of work has been done in 2022, and growth is gradually returning again. But it is still at the sub-optimal level.
“Inflationary pressures continue and even though inflation is coming down as a result of measures being taken by monetary authorities to bring down the inflation rate, it still remains at very high levels globally to the extent that even as global inflation is projected at seven per cent, it remains very high.
“And the high point of all the consequences of what we’ve seen in 2022 is that poverty, which was very well discussed here, has risen quite astronomically globally and over 700 million people are being struck by poverty.
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“Food insecurity has also risen quite tremendously to the extent that over 350 million people globally are hit by extreme food crises all over the world,” he said.
While the meetings were on, some groups protested against Nigeria’s request for loan to cushion the effect of the looming subsidy removal.
This is increasing Nigeria’s debt and Emefiele was also quizzed on this issue.
About the high debt level which has caused a funding squeeze across the globe, the CBN boss noted that multilateral organisations were more constrained to lend to countries in need of loans.
He said: “Even the IMF themselves also talked about the fact that the debt portfolios and lending portfolios have reached all-time highs”.
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