Interest Rate Deregulation and Loans and Advances of Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria

This study examined the effect of interest rate deregulation on Nigerian banking system. The study adopted Augmented Dickey – Fuller (ADF), Bound test and Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL). The correlation result indicated that of the correlation matrix that all the explanatory variables (interest rate, lending rate and deposit rate) had effect on loan and advances. The results of the unit root test revealed that interest rate and lending rate were stationary at level 1(0) while loan and advances and deposit rate were stationary at first difference 1(1). Also the results of the bound test revealed that there exist long run equilibrium relationship among the variables. The result of the ARDL indicated that interest rate had significant effect on loan and advances while lending rate and deposit rate had an insignificant effect on loan and advances. It was concluded that banks should monitor the level of loan and advances in respect to major ratios for effective performance. The study thus, recommended that banks should monitor lending rate which should be fixed in order to enhance lending performance. Regulatory authority should ensure that macroeconomic variables such as money supply, liquidity ratio, lending rate, monetary policy rate are effectively managed to enhance bank performanc