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2019: CBN to monitor bank loan to politicians

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CBN removes fertilizer from forex transactions, goes tough on defaulters

The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, said on Thursday that it would monitor banks’ lending to politicians to finance their spending for the 2019 general elections.

Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the CBN, Mr Godwin Emefiele, stated this wilhile briefing the media on the outcome of the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee held in Abuja.

Emefiele said the apex would be monitoring the activities of banks with a view to intervening when they go wrong when he was asked about the measures the CBN has in place to check excessive lending by banks to politicians.

He however said he was optimistic that deposit money banks will be circumspect taking into consideration their past experiences and would not want to take excessive risks by increasing their lending exposure to politicians.

Emefiele said that while banks have their own risk assessment criteria, the apex bank would be closely monitoring their activities so as to protect the banking sector, adding that the CBN had met with chief executives of banks and during the meeting, they were warned on the dangers of involving in money laundering activities.

The CBN boss said that for any bank that is caught in money laundering activities, the apex bank would not hesitate to impose the appropriate sanction on such bank.

He said: “We have had meetings with the banks and we have asked them to be very careful on money laundering issues, and I believe they will be careful themselves because they know that if they are caught, it means that they will be heavily penalised.

“When you talk about lending to politicians, banks have their risk acceptance criteria and I don’t think that the banks would do that at this time. Everybody must have learnt their lessons.

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“We at the Central Bank we are watching. When things go wrong or about to go wrong, we will deal with it as appropriately as possible.”

Speaking on the MTN $8.1bn controversy, Emefiele said that the apex bank had met with top executives of the company who came in from South Africa on the issue, adding that very soon, a final decision of the apex bank on the matter would be announced.

Emefiele said apart from MTN, no other company in Nigeria was under investigation for irregular Certificates of Capital Importation.

He said: “We are in a process where we are saying this matter will be resolved. We have held meetings with the MTN Group.

“They flew in from South Africa and we have held meetings and we are at the verge of making announcement on what the agreements are. I am very optimistic that we have reached the end of the road on this subject.

“The sanctity of our CCI is sacrosanct and no other company is being investigated on the issue of CCI. No other person is being investigated on the issue of CCI. This is an isolated matter.”

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