The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele, has admitted that Nigerians are experiencing difficulties in carrying out online banking transactions due to the deluge of online transactions that hit Nigeria’s banking industry.
Emefiele said this while addressing newsmen at the end of the two-day meeting of the committee in Abuja on Tuesday when he confirmed the challenges Nigerians were facing as a result of the limit on cash withdrawals.
The CBN governor who apologised for the online transaction failures said the apex bank would sustain the current monetary tightening regime following the continued rise in headline inflation that has posed significant risks to Nigeria’s economy.
Emefiele said this as the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the CBN resolved to raise the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) known as interest rate by 50 basis points to 18 percent from 17.5 percent.
The CBN governor added that the continued upward risk to price development around expectation for the removal of fuel subsidy as well as rising prices of other energy sources, continued exchange rate pressure and uncertain climatic conditions further justified the need to pursue a moderate monetary policy.
He said, “I must apologise. Yes, online channels fail. But no doubt it is as a result of the deluge of online transactions that hit the banking industry. But it is being resolved.
“On a daily basis, our Payment System Management Department monitors the online payment platforms so as to make sure that when there is a downtime, they are quickly resolved so that transactions can go on smoothly.”
The CBN governor however noted that the apex bank retained other monetary policy parameters including bank’s Cash Reserve Requirement (CRR) at a minimum of 32.5 percent as well as the Liquidity Ratio (LR) at 30 percent.
He further explained that the decision to raise interest rate was taken to further rein in inflation.
It could be noted that the MPR is the rate at which the CBN lends to commercial banks and often determines the cost of borrowing in the economy.
