The Central Bank governor Godwin Emefiele has categorically rejected demands by Kaduna Governor
Nasir El-Rufai, Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun and
yours truly, for the CBN to reduce interest rates to enable small businesses have access to funds to ease the recession and promote growth.
According to a report in the
Vanguard, the Apex bank governor argued that when N1trillion was recently injected by the CBN into the economy or made available to the banks, that rather "than loan this money to the banks or loan them to the consumers, or agriculture and manufacturers, like we said in the communique, we found that those credit went to traders, who used them to demand for foreign exchange, which ended up putting pressure on the foreign exchange market...Subsequent to that, we said since this money wasn’t deployed directly. He further said: “But we said we are not going to allow the banks to really have the cash until they send proposals to the CBN for primary agric projects, new manufacturing projects and other projects that will spur industrial capacity and manufacturing output."