It’s unlikely that the Nigerian central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet as scheduled next week to decide on interest rates because new committee members haven’t been approved, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Governor Godwin Emefiele said earlier this week that he was “very hopeful” that the meeting will take place as scheduled. The MPC currently meets six times a year, while the Central Bank Act requires the committee to gather only a minimum of four times per year.
In case the meeting doesn’t take place in January “we will just have a few weeks postponement,” he said.
Emefiele said he expected the MPC to keep the monetary policy rate unchanged. That means market reaction to the delay would be muted, said Joe Delvaux, a money manager at Duet Asset Management Ltd. in London.
“It won’t change investors’ positioning in the market much, but it would put into question the political impact on Nigeria’s institutions,” he said. “One could ask the question of how it is even possible to end up in a situation where the monetary policy of a country can’t be enacted due to too many MPC seats being empty.”
.Bloomberg