CBN retains an interest rate at 11.5%

The Central Bank of Nigeria’s Monetary Policy Committee  (MPC)has retained the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) at 11.5 per cent and kept all other parameters unchanged.

This was announced by CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele on Tuesday, January 25, at the apex bank’s headquarters in Abuja.

The Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) remained at 27.5 per cent, the Liquidity Ratio at 30 per cent and the Asymmetric Corridor at +100 and -700 Base Points around the TPM.

Emefiele, answering questions after presenting the outcome of the MPC meeting, said person-to-bank and bank-to-person transactions have accounted for 90 per cent of the transactions made on the eNaira fast wallet.

“Since its launch about three months ago, Nigerians have gradually continued to adopt eNaira as a fast and reliable means of exchange.

”The registered transactions go from P to P, that is, from Person to Person; o Person to Merchant, P to M; Bank to Person; Person to Bank and Bank to Merchants and Merchants to Bank.

“Person-to-Bank and Bank-to-Person make up 90 per cent of what we see in the market, and as you’ll see, we’ve spent the last three months looking at and monitoring the system and addressing issues primarily related to initial onboarding,” Emefiele said.

According to him, the transactions in the system have been super fast and it is still free for now.

He said that strict validation procedures were applied to preserve the integrity and security of the system, as it was account-based and required a digital identity.

“We feel you have to have a BVN and you have to have an account to be able to access; we also found that this has created some kind of restriction on people joining BVN and the rest of them.

“But again, we believe that what we do from the BVN is the best to prevent fraudsters from hacking the system.

“Most of the complaints received were primarily about the inability of potential users to onboard and activate the e-wallet due to a mismatch in BVN enrollment records,” he said.

Emefiele said the bank along with the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System and Money Depository Banks were working to streamline the process of updating such information.

He added that considerable progress had been made with the release of blocked accounts for reinstatement.

The CBN Governor also said that foreigners who held BVN could now join the system.

He added that with the recent enaira USSD digital economy and communications code allocation, Nigerians without a smartphone will soon be able to onboard and transact using enaira 997.

Emefiele said that the main bank was engaging fintechs and other industry players to create a bouquet of products on the enaira platform.

He said that while transactions in the system have so far mostly revolved around moving money to and from bank accounts, tests were underway with payment service providers licensed to allow payments using enaira on e-commerce platforms.

The CBN Governor explained that this would allow Small and Medium Businesses and other commercial service providers to offer their products and services and accept enaira as a means of payment and exchange.

He said that CBN was working on a framework that would take advantage of new and existing infrastructure to soon extend enaira service to the unbanked, as part of its commitment to meet the Ficial Inclusion goals.

In addition, he said that the bank, together with its stakeholders, plans to launch a vigorous awareness campaign to create the necessary knowledge about enaira’s operations.