The recent Central Bank of Nigeria Monetary Policy Committee‘s decision to continue its hike of interest rate by another 100 basis points to 16.5 per cent has elevated the debate on where the preference should lie.
Lowering inflation is a core mandate for all central banks. Monetary stability is important for economic well-being. But should that be at the detriment of economic growth which is central to everything else?
The current inflation-fighting mode is worldwide because of the resulting impact of COVID-19, which disrupted supply chains everywhere, leading to the shortage of goods and raw materials everywhere. The resulting impact has been a hike in prices to compensate for the disruption and the resulting shortage of products everywhere, and therefore inflation.
The worldwide nature of this inflation phenomenon has seen inflation rates rise even in the places like the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, where inflation has risen to unprecedented levels. These are places where a few years ago, the fear was the possibility of economic deflation, given the long and subdued nature of inflation in those climes. So the inflation problem is real and has to be dealt with. The initial interest rate hikes by the CBN were not criticised so loudly though there were those who thought the hikes could have been moderated. It was necessary that the CBN should ensure that should a recession suddenly arrive, it will have the space to use interest rate cuts to stimulate the economy.
However, many analysts think the recent hike has gone overboard. This is even more so given the sluggish state of the economy and the perception that our inflation is currently driven by factors other than interest rates. Our inflation is driven by the scarcity of almost everything because we produce very little of what we consume. We import inflation when we pay for goods in foreign exchange, which in turn puts pressure on the naira. Our imports cut across everything; from food to machinery and raw materials for our factories. Even the maintenance for existing production lines, also utilises forex for spare parts. So the problem of inflation in this sense cannot be solved by interest rate hikes.
In the case of growth, we cannot afford the slowdown. The growth of our economy is so crucial at this stage of our development that anything that impedes it must be removed. We need double-digit economic growth for the next several years if we are to lift millions of our people out of poverty. Growth is even more important at the Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises level which will be most impacted by the high-interest rates the CBN is pushing. Given that most jobs are created at this level, the push for high interest rates-so high and so fast-is destructive to job creation, and affects this segment of the economy negatively. This is a double whammy for the poor because they are also the worst hit when inflation is persistent as it is now.
The consensus in recent times is that for developing countries, growth should be prioritised and pushed in the hope that strong economic growth will outpace inflation. The Asian Tigers of the 1980s mostly pursued this strategy. They ignored inflation and went for fast growth. It paid off later as most were able to outgrow inflation.
I have personally held the view that the inflation rate in any economy is the aspirational growth rate of that economy. My interpretation here is that if an economy is growing at say 5 per cent and inflation is 12 per cent, the 7 per cent differential is the additional capacity the real economy aspires to grow at. This is why pursuing growth and temporarily ignoring inflation has a better payoff. This is even more so in our economy, where the inflation drivers are out of our control.
The CBN has not done enough to curate growth in our economy. Some of the attempts of the past five years have been abysmal and have been a case of throwing money at the problem without any clear strategy for results. Some of the programmes that have expanded the CBN’s balance sheet have clearly been more political than economic. Take the MSMEs for instance, the CBN did not need to create a lending agency, the strategy could have been to use existing microfinance banks to lend to that segment at a specified low-interest rate that would ensure widespread credit throughout the economy. My personal experience with micro-credit schemes convinces me that a focused programme to fund this segment of the economy is doable.
Their agricultural intervention, for instance, also went overboard as it was clearly a case of pouring money aimlessly. The first mistake here was the sudden need for the CBN to become a direct lender when it was not necessary. The CBN has always been a major player in agricultural finance, where it provides a large funding base for banks to draw from, but the lending has always been left to the banks. The CBN’s direct intervention introduced externalities into the lending process. Most of the money the CBN chose to give out directly will not be coming back. The right thing to do was to have incentivised banks to lend to that sector and increase lending allocation for agriculture and introduce special low-interest rates. No doubt, there was justification to push for a larger share of the lending pie to agriculture; the question was how?
In the 1980s when I worked for NAL Merchant Bank, there was what was referred to as ‘sectoral lending’ which the CBN imposed on banks. Agriculture, housing and SMEs were the focus. Banks mostly met these sectoral allocations because there were sanctions. NAL, for instance, created its own customers in these areas where there were no credible customers; given their very high credit standards in those days. They developed their own companies by backing credible teams. Triple Gee Plc, still listed on the Stock Exchange today, was created as one of the developed SMEs. The genius was that Atedo Peterside and his team simply identified Mr Giwa, an experienced executive at Academy Press at the time who wanted to try his hand at entrepreneurship, and got the support of NAL to build a small operation around him to take the advantage of the emerging opportunities in the computer printing papers that followed the transition to computers in the 1980s. The credit was so tightly controlled in my credit group at the time; it consisted of leasing the equipment needed and credit for working capital. This way, if the credit is not performing, NAL will take back the equipment on lease, and worry only about the working capital which was small enough and will not matter.
To meet, their agriculture sector lending, they again, working with another NAL customer, Afprint Limited, the largest textile company in Lagos at the time, created Afcott, an agricultural farming operation in the present day Adamawa State, using large co-operatives of smallholder farmers and creating thousands of jobs in the process, had them doing the farming of cotton, which Afprint processed and utilised for its textiles, and even processed the cotton seeds into edible oils. This was Afprint’s response to the government’s backward integration policy at the time. NAL Merchant Bank was the most profitable bank in this era and did everything regarding lending to these sectors to meet the CBN-directed sectoral allocation. This is proof that when the right incentives and sanctions are put in place banks will do the needful.
The CBN must never again allow itself to be dragged into making political interventions as it did in the last couple of years. The current inflation debacle is partly due to the unprecedented and uncontrolled infusion of easy money into the economy. COVID-19 necessitated some but the unusual expansion of the CBN Balance Sheet cannot be justified. It is hoped that the CBN has learnt some lessons.
Ogiemwonyi, a retired investment banker, writes from Ikoyi, Lagos
