Monetary Policy and Commercial Banks’ Credit to Agricultural Sector: A Study of Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between monetary policy and commercial banks credit to agricultural sector in Nigeria with uses of secondary data for the period 1981 to 2021 by applying Autoregressive Distributed Lag technique. Result from this study shown that, liquidity ratio, monetary policy rate, loan to deposit ratio and cash reserve ratio have no significant influence on commercial banks credit to agricultural sector in Nigeria. On the other hand the treasury bill ratios has significant positive effect on commercial banks credit allocated to agricultural sector in Nigeria. The study therefore recommends that Central Bank of Nigeria should cuts down the cash reserve ratio to encourage the loanable funds available with the banks. Regulatory authority should put in place suitable policy that will prevailing cash hoarding in the economy to achieve desired liquidity ratio level. CBN should use the loan to deposit to center for regulating and moderating commercial banks for a positive significant impact to sectors in Nigeria.  Authorities should use monetary policy rate to expand the volume of commercial banks’ ability to grant credits. Finally, monetary policy authority should ensure that holding of treasury bills by commercial banks should be reduced to enhance the ability to grant loans and advances to the public for productive purposes. .