Responsiveness of Nigeria’s short-term interest rates to changes in the policy rate

Abstract

This paper appraised the efficacy of the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) as an anchor for other short-term interest rates in the economy. Adopting the vector autoregression approach, the responses of Nigeria's short-term interest rates to changes in the interbank rate (proxy for MPR) was modeled. The paper found that the pass-through from MPR to money market interest rates in the long-run is higher for the prime and lending rates than for changes in the Treasury bill rate and 3-month deposit rate. Overall, there seemed to be an asymmetric impact with an increase or fall in the interbank rate.