The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced that the first meeting of the year for its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) , earlier scheduled for February 17 and 18, 2025, will now be held on Wednesday, February 18 and Thursday, February 19, 2025.
A statement released by the apex bank on Monday said: “The announcement puts paid to speculations around the date of the meetings amidst 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 CBN’s MPC to ascertain if there will be a hold or hike in the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), going by current trends,” the statement added.
The MPC’s first meeting of 2025 was initially slated to hold in January, but was rescheduled to February 17 and 18.
Analysts said the shift was to allow the MPC to consider new rebased Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) data that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had said would be released at the end of January.
At the MPC’s 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 per cent.
It retained the asymmetric corridor around the MPR at +500/-100 basis points, Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) of Deposit Money Banks and Merchant Banks at 50% and 16% respectively, while the Liquidity Ratio was left at 30 per cent.
