Business

Why Monetary Policy Rate was Increased – CBN

Published

3 years ago

September 28, 2022

The Central Bank of Nigeria says its Monetary Policy Committee’s decision to increase Monetary Policy Rate is to control rising inflation.

CBN’s Director, Monetary Policy Department, Hassan Mahmoud, said this on Wednesday at a post-MPC briefing tagged: “Unveiling Facts behind the Figures’’.

The MPC, in its 287th meeting on Tuesday, had increased the MPR by 150 basis points, from 14 per cent to 15.5 per cent.

The MPR is the baseline interest rate in an economy on which other interest rates within that economy are built on.

The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, had said that the decision was informed by persistent rise in inflation rate and fragile economic growth.

According to Mahmud, the MPC got to a point where stringent measures have to be taken to control inflation.

He said that the committee took cognisance of global as well as local economic issues in arriving at its policy decisions.

“We raised the MPR because it is necessary to do so. The quantity of money in the system was too much for the economy to absorb,’’ he said.

He said that monetary policy tools were meant to deal with short term risks, adding that the idea was to make the cost of funds expensive to drive down inflation.

According to Mahmud, the stimuluses that governments across the world provided for their citizens during COVID-19 increased the ability of people to spend, thereby, creating challenges with global supply.

“A lot of households and small businesses were injected with stimuluses; the U.S did two trillion dollars, Nigeria did about five trillion Naira, these increased the ability of people to spend.

“But the supply side could not meet up with the demand because that volume of injection was far more than the regular intake for those economies, this made prices to go up,’’ he said.

He also blamed the Russian-Ukraine war, as well as the resurgence of COVID-19 in China as responsible for rise in global inflationary trend.

“That region accounts for more than 50 per cent of global commodity supply and 38 per cent of global oil and gas supply.

“The war resulted to some shortages which made prices to go up.

“Then the COVID-19 lockdown in China. The country is the largest importer of commodities across the globe,’’ he said.

Speaking on the various economic intervention initiatives by the apex bank and the prospect of recouping the funds, Dr Yusuf Yila, director, Development Finance Department, said about nine trillion Naira had been invested in the various development finance interventions.

He, however, said that all the monies would be recovered.

According to Yila, N9.3 trillion has been invested in various development finance interventions, out of which N3.7 trillion has been repaid.

“Most of the loans are still under moratorium, especially those in manufacturing. Manufacturing forms the largest part of our portfolio, about 31 per cent,’’ he said.

He, however, said that one of the best-performing interventions was the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme, where out of the N800 billion that was lent out, about N700 billion had been repaid.

Yila said that through the flagship agriculture intervention scheme, the Anchor Borrowers Programme, one trillion Naira had been lent out to smallholder farmers, while about N400 billion has so far been recovered.

According to him, the department will restrict intervention to critical sectors like the SMEs and the electricity sector for now.

Speaking on the depreciation of the Naira, the Director, Trade and Exchange Department, Mrs Ozoemena Nnaji, said the apex bank was taking steps to firm up the currency.

Nnaji said that demand for foreign exchange outstripped supply currency, adding that the CBN was doing a lot to mop up supply.

“One of the steps is the Naira for dollar remittance drive, which has resulted to a huge increase in diaspora remittances.

“There is also the RT200 bringing in forex. Repatriation has gone up from 20 million dollars in the first quarter to about 600 million dollars in the second quarter.

“In this third quarter we are looking at more than one billion dollars of repatriated inflows,’’ she said.
NAN

Business

French Media Giant Canal+ Takes Over S.Africa’s Multichoice

Published

1 day ago

September 22, 2025

Editor

French media giant Canal+ said Monday it had taken effective control of South African television and streaming company MultiChoice, creating a group present in nearly 70 countries in Africa, Europe and Asia.

The companies said in a joint statement that the combined group will have a workforce of 17,000 employees and serve more than 40 million subscribers.

The acquisition is “the largest transaction ever undertaken” by Canal+, the statement said.

Canal+, which is already the sector’s leader in French-speaking African countries, now controls what it described as the leader in the continent’s English- and Portuguese-speaking regions.

“This acquisition allows us to strengthen our position as a leader in Africa, one of the most dynamic pay-TV markets in the world,” Canal+ chief executive Maxime Saada said in the statement.

The buyout was given a final green light by South Africa’s competition authority in late July, more than a year after Canal+ launched its bid.

Canal+ offered 125 rand ($7.2) per share for MultiChoice when it launched its offer last year, valuing the South African firm at around $3.0 billion.

Canal+ is present in 25 African countries through 16 subsidiaries and has eight million subscribers.

MultiChoice operates in 50 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and has 14.5 million subscribers.

It includes Africa’s premier sports broadcaster, SuperSport, and the DStv satellite television service.

AFP

Business

BREAKING: Nigeria’s GDP Grows By 4.23% In Q2 2025 – NBS

Published

1 day ago

September 22, 2025

Editor

Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 4.23 per cent (year-on-year) in the second quarter of 2025, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed in its Q2 2025 GDP Report.

According to the report released on Monday on its website, the figure shows a significant improvement compared to 3.48 per cent recorded in the second quarter of 2024 and the 3.13 per cent recorded in Q1 2025.

The figures signal a strengthening economy, driven by recent rebasing, rebound in oil production and a resilient non-oil sector.

The report said, “Following the rebasing of the Gross Domestic Product using 2019 as the base year, previous quarterly GDP estimates were benchmarked to the rebased annual estimates to align the old series with the new rebased estimates

“This procedure provided a new quarterly GDP series, which is compared to the 2025 second quarter estimates. Gross Domestic Product grew by 4.23% (year-on-year) in real terms in the second quarter of 2025.

“This growth rate is higher than the 3.48 per cent recorded in the second quarter of 2024. During the quarter under review, agriculture grew by 2.82%, an improvement from the 2.60% recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2024.

According to NBS, “The growth of the industry sector stood at 7.45% from 3.72% recorded in the second quarter of 2024, while the Services sector recorded a growth of 3.94% from 3.83% in the same quarter of 2024.”

The report said in terms of share of the GDP, “the Industry sector contributed more to the aggregate GDP in the second quarter of 2025 at 17.31% compared to the corresponding quarter of 2024 at 16.79%.”

It added, “In the quarter under review, aggregate GDP at basic price stood at N100,730,501.10 million in nominal terms. This performance is higher when compared to the second quarter of 2024, which recorded an aggregate GDP of N84,484,878.46 million, indicating a year-on-year nominal growth of 19.23%.”

Details later…

Business

Why Nigeria’s Crude Oil Production Dropped To 1.63mbpd In August – NUPRC

Published

2 days ago

September 21, 2025

Editor

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has explained that unscheduled maintenance at a refinery facility made Nigeria’s crude oil production drop on a month-on-month basis in August.

This comes as Nigeria’s crude oil production dropped to 1.63 million barrels per day month-on-month in August, down from 1.71 million bopd in July.

NUPRC disclosed this in its Crude Oil and Condensate Production for August 2025, released on Saturday.

This means a 4.7 per cent drop in combined crude oil and condensate production from 1.71 million bopd in July.

In the same vein, crude oil production itself declined by 4.8 per cent, down from 1.5 million bopd in July 2025.

“The month-on-month drop was driven by a single-day unscheduled maintenance at an oil facility.

“In the month of August, the lowest and peak combined crude and condensate production were 1.59 million bopd and 1.85 million bopd, respectively,” NUPRC said.

The data showed that while there was a decline month-on-month, the country’s crude oil production rose on a year-on-year basis by 5.5 per cent to 1.63 mbpd in August this year from 1.58 million bopd in the same period last year.

Further analysis indicates that daily condensate production in August stood at 197,229 bpd, reflecting a decline.

Also, Nigeria’s crude oil output in August achieved 96 per cent of its OPEC quota, which is set at 1.5 million bopd.

Accordingly, in the period under review, Forcados Terminal topped the production charts, delivering a total of 8.99 million barrels, including 8.08 million barrels of crude oil and 915.2k barrels of condensates.