INTRODUCTION

Monetary policy deals with the discretionary control of money supply by the monetary authorities in order to achieve the desired economic goals. It cold be seen that money policy comprises of those government actions which are designed in attempt to change the influence the behaviour of the monetary sector of an economy. However, there are two views on the efficiency or monetary policy, monetarist and Keynesian view. The Keynesian view is that monetary policy should be direct towards interest rates rather than money supply and that the monetary policy should be subsidiary to fiscal policy. The monetarist recommends that the control of money supply should be the main concern of the money authorities. But it should be noted that money policy has a central role in macro economic management primarily because of the close relationship between the monetary aggregate and economic activity.

This is true irrespective of whether one is considering the monetarist or Keynesian framework. Although it may be desirable to introduce some monetary instruments the environment for their effective application may not be suitable. This fact should be borne in minds as we considered the application of various instrument of controlling money supply in the Nigerian economy. The Nigeria monetary system is part of the wider financial sector and its major operators are the monetary authorities, the banks merchant and commercial banks) as we as discount houses recently permitted to operate within the system.