CBN to hold first MPC meeting of 2025 in February

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced that its first Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) earlier scheduled for February 17 and 18, 2025, will now hold on Wednesday, February 19 and Thursday, February 20, 2025.

The announcement puts paid to speculation around the date of the 299th meeting, amid delays by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to release the rebased Consumer Price Index (CPI).

With a date now fixed, the attention of economic watchers is focused on the meeting outcomes – on whether there will be a hold or hike in the monetary policy rate (MPR), going by current trends.

The first MPC meeting ought to have been held since January, but was shelved.

Read also: mpc Nigeria MPC buys time for inflation rebasing, moves meeting to February

During the last meeting for 2024 which was held in November, the Committee raised the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) for the sixth time by 25 basis points to 27.50%. This was to address rising inflation, which stood at 33.88% as of October 2024.

The asymmetric corridor around the MPR was retained at +500/-100 basis points; Cash Reserve Ratio of Deposit Money Banks at 50% and Merchant Banks at 16%; as well as the Liquidity Ratio at 30%.

But since then, inflation has risen for the fourth straight month, hitting a near 30-year high of 34.8% in December 2024, up from 34.6% in the prior month.

Food inflation, which constitutes over 50% of Nigeria’s inflation basket, moderated to 39.84% in December from 39.93% the previous month.

“The Central Bank is resolute and committed to continuing to fight the war against inflation and there is no going back on that.

“We are going to deploy everything in our arsenal to ensure that we are able to tame it. And of course, this entails the return to orthodox monetary policies,” Cardoso had stated at the end of the meeting, amid agitations of rising interest rates on the economy.