By Favour Nnabugwu
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said the beneficiaries of the intervention finds disbursed in the last four years, N3.7 trillion has been re-paid out of the total of N9. 3 trillion
The Director of Development Finance Department of the bank, Mr. Yusuf Yila, made this known in Abuja today
Of the total figure the apex bank said a total of N5. 3 trillion of the intervention funds was not yet due for repayment.
He said that the apex bank would slow down intervention schemes, with it’s new move to curtail the inflationary trends.
Mr..Yila insisted that all beneficiaries of CBN intervention schemes must pay back their loans, as according to him, they were not grants.
Giving details on why the CBN raised the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) the Director of Monetary Policy, Dr. Hassan Mahmoud explained that in current economic situation in the country, with the rising inflation rate, hiking the interest rate was the best decision to curtail it.
“In the last 17 months or so, inflation has been going up but we didn’t jack up the rate until we felt that we had to act to tackle the trend.
“Note that Central Banks have been raising rates across the globe because of the global inflation trend. But we didn’t raise rate just because others are raising rates. We raised rate because of the wind gap before the inflation rate and the interest rate.
“How does the rising inflation affect the economy? The volume of money was too high for the economy to a sorb in terms of the flow of supply. Consequently, prices will go up because of the volume of money in the system.
“A lot of those funds standing idle. The banks are not lending the funds and as such impacting negatively on our Freign Exchange market.
“It will also impact on the Foreign Exchange market and when the Naira depreciates, so also will the it will increase the inflation rate. Besides, it will make our economy unattractive to foreign investors to bring in their money.”
