The much anticipated Monetary Policy Committee meeting was held in Abuja, the nation’s capital, on Tuesday. Following the MPC meeting, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), announced that the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), which measures interest rate, has been raised to 15.5 percent from 14 percent.

The MPR was raised by 150 basis points from 14 percent as the financial regulator seeks to tame rising inflation that currently stands at 20.52 percent.

The asymmetric corridor of +100/-700 basis points around the MPR was retained but the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) was raised to a minimum of 32.5 percent. The Liquidity Ratio was also retained at 30 percent.

CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said on Tuesday that the decision to raise the interest rate has come from the majority of the MPC members.

“The committee voted unanimously to raise the MPR…The MPC voted to raise the MPR to 15.5, retain the asymmetric corridor at +100 -700 basis points around the MPR. Increase the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) to a minimum of 32.5% and retain liquidity ratio at 30%,” he said.

Emefiele explained that the decision was informed by the members’ deliberation on the impact of the widening margin between the current policy rate of 14 percent and the inflation rate of 20.52 percent.

“At this meeting, the option of reducing the policy rate was not considered as this would be gravely detrimental to reigning in inflation. The committee thus agreed unanimously to raise the policy rate to narrow the interest rate gap and reign in inflation. The committee thus voted unanimously to raise the MPR.

“10 members voted to raise the MPR by 150 basis points, one (voted to raise it) by 100 basis points and one by 50 basis points. 10 members voted to increase CRR (Cash Reserve Ratio) by 500 basis points, while two members voted to increase it by 750 basis points,” he said.

However, the MPR, which is the highest in 20 years, has raised some concern. The concern stems from the impact the new interest rate will have on the entities under the CBN debt list. The CBN has lent about N20 trillion to the federal government and about N10 trillion to selected entities.

Experts believe that raising the interest rate to 15 percent on all the loans will severely impact local production.

“No SME producing locally can survive with 15%+ interest rates,” Kalu Aja, a financial expert wrote.

The central bank had in its last MPC meeting, increased the interest rate from 11.5% to 14%. But the decision failed to tame the surging inflation rate, which rose from 19.6 percent in July by 0.92 basis points to 20.52% in August, the highest in 17 years.

Forex scarcity has been fingered as the major cause of the rising inflation, which the CBN’s policies, including schemes and intervention programmes, have failed to mitigate.

For years, African restaurants have struggled with procurement and preservation of foodstuffs, resulting in waste of food products and loss of revenue. This situation created a huge friction in the African food markets that inspired Tunde Kara, Olumide Fayankin, Gatumi Aliyu, and Wale Oyepeju, to found Vendease.

The startup, which focuses on procuring and preserving food for restaurants in Africa – moving food from farms to restaurants, has grown into a multi million dollar company that has continued to attract investors.

Vendease announced that it has raised $30 million ($20 million equity and $10 million debt) in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Partech Africa and TLcom with participation from existing investors such as VentureSouq, Hustle fund, Hack VC, GFR Fund, Kube VC, Magic Fund and Kairos Angels.

Kara CEO, Fayankin COO, Aliyu CPO and Oyepeju CTO, came together in 2020 with the vision of solving Nigeria’s food industry’s inefficiencies and eventually expanding to other African markets. The platform is designed to mitigate losses and help food businesses thrive.

In about two years since it was founded, Vendease has raised more than $35 million. Last year, the YC-backed startup raised $3.2 million to expand its operations across Nigeria.

Kara told TechCrunch that the company plans to use the new funds to expand and consolidate its operations in eight cities in Nigeria and Ghana. He also said that it is planning to move into new markets and build new products to increase customers’ efficiency.

“We’re building technology to efficiently move food from the point of production to the point of consumption. Everything we build at Vendease: financing, logistics, warehousing, inventory management, is tailored towards ensuring that food flows efficiently from that point of production to the point of consumption,” he said.

Vendease, described as a series of stacks, said most of its customers, including restaurants and food businesses, hospitals, hotels and schools, are subject to $100 billion in annual losses due to several factors. The factors include unreliable supply, wastage, limited data on making informed procurement decisions and little or no capital to fund procurement.

Over the last 12 months, the company said it has moved approximately 400,000 metric tonnes of food for its over 2,000 customers, helping them to save about $2 million in procurement costs and over 10,000 in person-hours.

Kara said that Vendease has saved its customers almost $500,000 in wastage costs due to overstocking by using the businesses’ data and providing them with the necessary resources — particularly around inventory management.

“Since businesses don’t have access to accurate data, they usually buy what they don’t need. We help them to solve that problem in two ways. One, because businesses know they can get anything on our platform in 12 hours, they don’t need to stock some of the things they would’ve stored before. Two, they can also track what they bought and know how much is left before they need to buy again,” he said.

Besides food procurement and preservation, Vendease also offers financial services – Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) to its customers, which it now uses financial institutions that provide its financing – a different format from its earlier method. The company said it has been able to provide businesses more than $12 million worth of inventory via this embedded finance product.

“Something important to us about our current growth and impact is despite the ongoing global food supply shortage and inflation, Vendease is helping our users save big and provide relative stability for their stock levels. Shielding them (to a large extent) from the most severe effects of the current global shortage. What excites us is we can have even more impact as we extend and entrench our technology within Africa and the rest of the world. And that’s what keeps us going,” Kara said.