Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer, cut its benchmark interest rate by 2 percentage points to boost bank lending and ease the economic slowdown.

The key lending rate was lowered to 6 percent, Lamido Sanusi, who took over as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria on June 3, told reporters today in Abuja after presiding over his first Monetary Policy Committee meeting.

“They’re trying to lower rates to encourage borrowing,” Pabena Yinkere, an analyst at Lagos-based Access Bank Plc, said before today’s announcement.

The seven-day interbank lending rate is near the cap of 22 percent, the Money Market Association of Nigeria said on July 3. The high rate is a result of a lingering liquidity squeeze after a slump in the stock market forced many investors to default on loans and foreign investors pulled funds out of the country.

At least 1 trillion naira ($6.8 billion) was lent to speculators to buy shares as equities soared almost 13-fold in the eight years before last year’s crash, according to Bank of America Corp. Nigeria’s All Share Index tumbled 46 percent in 2008 and has fallen another 13 percent in 2009.

The cash squeeze led economic growth to slow to 6.3 percent in the first quarter of the year from 8.2 percent in the final quarter of 2008, easing pressure on inflation, the central bank said on June 22.

The inflation rate fell for the third consecutive month in May, dropping to 13.2 percent from 13.3 percent the month before, the National Bureau of Statistics said on June 16.

Chukwuma Soludo, whose term as central bank governor ended last month, cut the benchmark interest rate by 1.75 percentage points on April 8 after it had been on hold since Sept. 18.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=aLWyE1w.Vdt4

How will all these affect the woman on the street that has ideas but has no collaterals?
How will this help the new grad that would like to start his own small biz, but came from a poor background and dont even own a land to stand as surety.
What is the rate that the bank is giving loan out to people?