As the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) prepares to convene on Monday, results from the CBN’s latest Inflation Expectations Survey suggest that a significant portion of Nigerians anticipate inflation to remain stable in the short term, although opinions remain mixed across sectors and timeframes.
The CBN on Tuesday issued a notice of the 300th meeting of The MPC scheduled to hold on May 19 and 20, 2025, in Abuja.
According to the April 2025 edition of the survey, 48.9 percent of overall respondents expect inflation to remain the same over the next month, compared to 35.9 percent who foresee an increase and 15.3 percent who anticipate a decline.
The moderate outlook suggests a cautious optimism in price stability as the committee gears up to review monetary policy direction amid persistent inflationary pressures.
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Breaking down the data further, businesses appear slightly more conservative in their expectations. For the one-month horizon, 55.2 percent of business respondents believe inflation will remain unchanged, while 31.4 percent expect it to rise and 13.4 percent anticipate a decline.
Looking three months ahead, 36.3 percent of businesses project an increase, 38.7 percent foresee no change, and 25 percent expect a decrease.
Over a six-month period, their outlook is more evenly split, with 37.3 percent predicting a rise, 31.6 percent expecting stability, and 31.1 percent forecasting a drop.
Households, on the other hand, express greater concern about rising prices. For the next month, 41 percent of household respondents expect inflation to increase, while 41.5 percent believe it will remain the same and 17.5 percent see a decline.
Their three-month and six-month expectations reveal a steadily growing fear of inflation, with 48.2 percent and 50.6 percent respectively anticipating higher prices.
The survey also touched on expenditure expectations, providing further insight into inflation perception. Businesses are more inclined than households to expect higher spending in the current month, likely reflecting anticipated increases in operational costs. This supports the notion that input costs and supply-side constraints continue to shape corporate outlooks more sharply than consumer sentiment.
The mixed sentiment captured in the report underscores the complexity of the inflation landscape ahead of the MPC’s meeting. While a slim majority across the board expect price levels to remain steady in the immediate term, the growing share of households expecting price increases points to underlying concerns, particularly about food and household energy costs.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is set to release its inflation report in the coming days. Nigeria’s headline inflation unexpectedly increased to 24.23 percent year/year in March from 23.18 percent y/y in February. The elevated inflation reading was on the back of two consecutive monthly declines in y/y headline inflation, primarily attributed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rebasing exercise in January 2025.
According to a report by FBNQuest The rise in the inflation reading was primarily driven by the resurgence of the m/m readings for all three measures of inflation, signalling persistent price pressures.
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Olayemi Cardoso, governor of the CBN, reaffirmed the bank’s dedication to maintaining an orthodox monetary policy framework, saying that this approach is already beginning to produce tangible results.
“If we continue with our course of orthodox monetary policy, which has already shown results, then inflation will moderate over time. Alongside that, interest rates will also begin to ease,” he said on Monday, at the launch of the World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update in Abuja.
