Naira: Senate summons Emefiele; LCCI angry with CBN boss

Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, is on the spot.
This is because senators are angry over the ‘bad shape’ of the naira. Therefore, Emefiele has been summoned to appear in the Upper Chamber to explain the free fall of Nigeria’s currency.
The naira currently exchange between N295 and N300 to a dollar.
At plenary on Thursday, the senators were angry with Emefiele for not being ‘in charge of the exchange rate’.
This came from a Point of Order raised by the Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, over the continuous devaluation of the Naira.
Ndume said the purchasing power of Nigerians was being eroded gradually.
The naira has depreciated steadily since Monday when the CBN stopped the weekly sale of foreign exchange to Bureau de Change (BDC) operators in a bid to sanitise the market.
Traders at the market said that they were concerned about the depreciating naira exchange rate in the black market.
They, however, expressed optimism that the policy might impact positively on the market in the long run.
In a related development, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) is angry that the effect of relaxing the tight monetary conditions is yet to translate to reduced lending rates.
It, therefore, advised the Emefiele to formulate a framework on the Monetary Policy Rates (MPR) that would be beneficial to players in the economic sector.
LCCI’s Director-General, Mr Muda Yusuf, said on Thursday in Lagos that such a framework should be able to transmit the benefits of MPR reduction to key players in the economy.
The CBN had on November 24, 2015 reduced the MPR from 13 per cent to 11 per cent as well as the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) from 25 per cent to 20 per cent.
The MPR is the benchmark interest rate at which the CBN lends to Deposit Money Banks (DMB) to cover their immediate cash shortfalls.
Emefiele, had said that the reduction was aimed at stimulating the growth of the real sector of the economy through improved liquidity and reduced lending rates.
Yusuf said: “We expect that by now, the benefits of economic stimulation through reduced MPR will have lessen the pain of high interest rate suffered by entrepreneurs operating in the country.
“However, lending rates from commercial banks to entrepreneurs have remained unchanged. The banks are still lending at high interest rate to SMEs at between 23 per cent and 25 per cent, depending on the profile of the organisation.
“The customers are not getting a fair deal from the banks, as far as some of these policy actions are concerned, while the trend is also slowing the growth of the economy.’’
He further said that if the situation had been reversed, banks would have, immediately, reflected the changes in the adjustment of their lending rates.
The Director-General urged the CBN to uphold policy implementation by financial institutions and remove impediments hindering investments and economic growth.