The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will continue to play its developmental roles to facilitate the growth of the nation’s economy.

The CBN Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, made this submission while speaking at the annual Sir Patrick Gillam Lecture series of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London last week.

According to the CBN Governor, while the primary goal of a central bank should be price stability, but in the context of developing economies, the central bank should also emphasise on its developmental roles in order to support positive economic transformation and rapid growth.

It will be recalled that the apex bank, in a bid to facilitate the speedy growth of the economy, recently extended intervention funds to key sectors of the economy.

Sanusi, who was the guest speaker at the event, said the current reforms in the nation’s banking sector were yielding the much-needed dividend, stressing that public confidence had been restored to the sector.

In his presentation entitled “The Global Crisis and the Nigerian Economy: The Central Bank of Nigeria Responses,” Mallam Sanusi noted that the economy was still plagued by some daunting challenges despite the robust economic growth. According to him, these challenges have slowed down the transmission of such growth indices to higher employment opportunities.

He further stated that “the link between major growth drivers, particularly agriculture and manufacturing, continue to be weak and the required costs of the expected infrastructural needs of the economy are daunting and remain a major challenge to financial sector”.

The Governor also noted that “the need for a low-cost long-term infrastructure financing requires more efforts than the CBN alone can tackle”, stating that “major bottlenecks and supply-side constraints, including enabling legal framework have slowed the responsiveness of some CBN reform measures”.   

The lecture series have treated a range of contemporary economic issues of global concern, with prominent academic specialists and policy makers speaking before audiences of LSE staff and students as well as interested members of the public, including journalists, bankers, businessmen, and representatives of various governments, multi lateral institutions, and non-governmental organisations.

The lecture was delivered at the instance of the Director, LSE, Professor Judith Rees, marking the annual Sir Patrick Gillam Lecture Series which has been running since 2005 under the joint auspices of the LSE and Standard Chartered Bank. Sir Patrick Gillam was a prominent and active LSE alumnus, a former Chairman of the bank and  professorial chair at the school.