CBN to delay MPC meeting – Emefiele

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will delay its next Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting by at least 10 days, the Governor, Godwin Emefiele, has said.

Nigeria’s senate will next week consider a report into nominations for CBN’s MPC meeting, its president said on Wednesday, a move that could end an impasse that has halted policy decisions. 

Emefiele, while speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the Sunti Golden Sugar Estate commissioning in Mokwa Local Government Area of Niger State, said though the MPC meeting would be delayed, it would certainly hold. 

“The MPC meeting will hold and I’m very delighted that the senate has decided to screen the nominees earlier sent to them by Mr. President. MPC was supposed to hold from March 19 to 20. What I suspect is that we will be holding our committee of governors meeting and we will decide the date. And I believe we will just have between seven to 10 days delay and the MPC will hold,” he assured. 

Recall the CBN MPC meeting in January did not hold due to lack of quorum following senate’s refusal to confirm President Buhari’s nomimations into the MPC. The president had last year sent two deputy governors’ nominations and other board members for confirmation. 12 members constitute the MPC and at least six must be present before a quorum can be formed. 

The over N50bn sugar facility, sitting on 17,000 hectares, is owned by Flower Mills Nigeria Plc and partly financed by the CBN to the tune of N25bn at single digit interest rate with a repayment period of 10 years. 10,000 hectares of will be used for sugarcane plantation.

Speaking further on CBN’s investment into Sunti, he said it was part of the Federal Government’s backward integration policy and that this would help conserve Nigeria’s scarce foreign reserve. 

“It’s a N25bn loan at single digit interest rate with a tenure of 10 years. It’s one of those facilities that we have disbursed out of our real sector support fund under the auspices of a couple of banks. 

Flower Mills is a local conglomerate in Nigeria. It produces not only sugar, but flour and foods generally. So I have no doubt that they will be able to repay the loan,” Mr. Emefiele said. 

“If you go into the factory,  you will marvel at the investment there. It’s not just about the factory alone, but they have over 10,000 hectares of which they are cultivating sugarcane on. They have so far cultivated about 3,000 hectares. The standard practice is that if you own a sugar mill, you should produce for six months in a year. But for the output they have now, they will be producing for just one month instead of six. So what we are trying to do is that through our Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) empower smallholder farmers who can grow sugarcane which will serve as additional stock for the sugar mill,” he assured.

On the real sector support fund, he explained that, “The fund is about N300bn,” adding that the CBN was “craving to create more of that fund, but we are very careful in disguising that fund.

 “Everybody wants to partake in it, but our emphasis at this time is to disburse a substantial portion of that fund into agriculture, agro processing and agro allied business. So I will say it’s doing very well,” he said. 

Speaking earlier in his welcome address, the Chairman of Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc Mr. John Coumantaros, said the facility had generated 3000 jobs and could generate up to 10,000 jobs at full capacity and would produce up to 100,000 tonnes of sugar annually.