South Africa’s Marcus tops Reuters survey on Africa central bankers

South Africa’s Gill Marcus was the best central banker in Africa’s emerging and frontier markets this year, despite taking no major policy
decisions, closely followed by Nigeria’s Lamido Sanusi, a Reuters survey of regional analysts showed. Marcus, whose last interest rate move was a 50 basis point cut in November 2010, scored an average of 8.2 points out of a possible 10 from the 10 sub-Saharan analysts polled. She was a shade ahead of Sanusi on 8.1 points.
Sanusi, a respected Islamic scholar and career banker, won praise for his aggressive and early monetary tightening and criticism of loose government fiscal policy, although several respondents said the Central Bank of Nigeria needed to improve the efficiency with which it releases data.