Effect of monetary policy on agricultural sector in Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the effect of monetary policy on agricultural sector in Nigeria, utilising time series data for the periods spanning from 1970 to 2010. The study captured both monetary and non-monetary policy variables such as lending rate, commercial banks credit to agriculture, exchange rate, government expenditure in agriculture and inflation rate in examining the effect of monetary policy on agricultural output. The methodology adopted is the Auto- Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bound Testing Approach. The results obtained showed that exchange rate and government expenditure had positive and significant effect on agricultural output and, hence agricultural sector in Nigeria. It is recommended that a sound exchange rate policy should be implemented aimed at boosting agricultural exports in Nigeria. Also, government investment to provide the basic infrastructure and institutions should be sustained because without the appropriate institutions, monetary policy cannot impact positively on real sector.