"A new date will be communicated in new course," the apex bank disclosed in the document seen by PREMIUM TIMES, with an apology for any inconvenience the change might cause.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) shifted a meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), where the benchmark interest rate would have been decided, a Thursday statement showed without stating the date of a new meeting.
"A new date will be communicated in new course," the apex bank disclosed in the document seen by PREMIUM TIMES, with an apology for any inconvenience the change might cause.
The rate-setting panel of the bank was due to meet on Monday and Tuesday 25 & 26 September for its 293rd session, days after the statistics office announced that annual inflation in Africa's largest economy accelerated by 1.7 per cent to 25.8 per cent in August.
That was the highest price level in more than 18 years.
Deferment of the meeting is coming about a week after President Bola Tinubu nominated investment banker and a former chair of Citibank Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso, to replace Godwin Emefiele, who was suspended in June and taken into custody thereafter by the State Security Service.
Mr Cardoso's appointment awaits legislative approval from the Senate, which is expected to resume from a recess next Tuesday.
Folashodun Shonubi, a CBN deputy governor overseeing operations, has been holding the fort since Mr Emefiele's suspension.
Since May 2022, the CBN has upped the monetary policy rate by 725 basis points in a move aimed at taming Nigeria's sticky inflation, which is now more than double the top end of the apex bank's target range of six to nice per cent.
A new upward adjustment to the rates is likely when next the MPC meets given that price levels, which have been spurred by food costs and more recently by fuel subsidy removal as well as by a much-pressured currency, will possibly be the focus of rate-setters.
The local currency has weakened by around 40 per cent since a major foreign exchange overhaul in June collapsed the country's multiple exchange rates into a single window, allowing the naira to trade more freely.
