Minister of Finance and Coordinating minister of the Economy Taiwo Oyedele has stated achieving single-digit inflation in Nigeria could save the government more than $10 billion.
Oyedele made the remarks on the sidelines of the IMF meetings in Thailand, highlighting the need for closer coordination between monetary and fiscal authorities as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) prepares to make inflation targeting the next phase of its reform programme.
“We are enhancing our collaboration between monetary and fiscal authorities. And already we are aware that the monetary authorities are piloting from monetary to inflation targeting, which means our collaboration is now even more important than it has ever been.
“The good thing is, because of the way the central bank has been able to help us manage the FX environment generally, we’ve seen the naira not only being stable but steadily appreciating.
“From the fiscal side, whatever we need to bring inflation to a single digit, thereby creating the conditions for interest rates to also be single digit, will save the fiscal side as of 2026 numbers more than US$10 billion.
“This is a top priority for us,” Oyedele said.
Nigeria’s headline inflation rate eased to 15.39% in August 2026, from 15.43% in July, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The latest figure represents a 0.04 percentage-point decline from the July rate.
