The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has slashed the monetary policy rate (MPR) to 23 percent.
Governor of CBN, disclosed the development at a news conference on Tuesday, following the committee’s 307th meeting in Abuja.
The “reset” marks the first reduction this year and the lowest since February 2024, when the interest rate was at 22.75 percent.
The latest MPR, which is the benchmark interest rate in a country, comes after the headline inflation rate of Nigeria dropped to 15.39 percent in August 2026 from 15.43 percent in July, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Cardoso said the CBN committee also cut the asymmetric corridor around the MPR at+50/-300 basis points.
The governor said the committee retained the cash reserve ratio (CRR) at 45 percent for deposit money banks and 16 percent for merchant banks, while the CRR on non-treasury single account (TSA) public sector deposits was also retained at 75 percent.
Cardoso said the decision to reset the MPR and adjust the corridor was geared at strengthening monetary policy transmission and reinforcing the MPR as the main signal of monetary policy.
“The MPC emphasized that the recalibration of the corridor does not constitute a change in the current monetary policy stance, but rather an operational reset to enhance the effectiveness of monetary policy and support the transition to an inflation targeting framework,” he said.
Cardoso stated that the CBN’s ongoing repair of its monetary policy implementation framework, including the adoption of the Nigerian overnight funding average (NOFA) as a transaction-based operational benchmark, had improved the transparency of money market operations.
“The committee therefore considered a reset of the MPR and recalibration of the corridor appropriate to better align the monetary policy implementation framework with market realities,” he said.
