The Central Bank of Nigeria has not printed small naira denominations for about a year now, causing the scarcity of the notes in the economy, the News Agency of Nigeria reports.
Sources at the CBN hinted that for a year now, the apex bank had not awarded contracts for the printing of the notes such as N5, N10, N20 and N50, which was usually done abroad.
NAN gathered that the recently printed notes in circulation, N200, N500 and N1,000, were produced by the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc.
The NSPM
produces currency notes and coins for the CBN and a wide range of security
documents for the federal, state and local government establishments,
commercial banks and blue chip companies.
According to
the NSPM website, the company has the ability to print over 40 million notes
weekly.
However, the
sources said the high cost of printing banknotes was the reason the apex bank
did not give out contracts for their production.
“The cost of
printing N50 is almost the same as N1,000. Printing small denominations costs
more than the value, and with the present economic situation, it makes sense to
print higher notes, which can be done locally by the NSPM,” one of the sources
explained.
A worker at First
Bank of Nigeria Limited told NAN that throughout the festive season, there were
hardly smaller currency notes to give to customers.
The worker,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said, “We usually request for cash
from the CBN through our Cash Management Centre, but recently, we have not been
able to get mints of N100 and below.
“We had N50 at
one point but it wasn’t in the quantity we are used to getting. We have been
telling our customers who call to request for mints that the smallest currencies
they can get is N200.”
A political
economist, Mr. Jude Ndukwe, said the implication of the situation was that
prices of goods were likely to increase since there were no smaller currencies
in circulation.
He said, “A
bread seller is likely to increase the cost of bread from N350 to N400 simply
because he does not want to deal with the difficult task of getting change.
“The same goes
for a bus conductor and so forth. This act alone is enough to add to the
hardship of the average Nigerians; N10 or N50 may not mean anything to some,
but it means a whole lot to millions of Nigerians living in poverty. So the
government should do something about this.”
But the Acting
Director, Corporate Communications, CBN, Mr. Isaac Okorafor, denied the
allegation that the apex bank had not contracted the printing of smaller
denomination currencies since 2015.
He stated,
“There is no scarcity of smaller denomination notes in the market. People are
complaining because we did not make provision for mints to be supplied in
smaller denominations during the festive season.
“You see,
people are fond of abusing these denominations by spraying them to be stepped
on during weddings and other ceremonies. The abuse is even worse during the
festive season; so, we decided to make scarce the denominations. But it’s not
that we have not been printing them.
“Yes, we
haven’t printed abroad but we also print locally, which we have been doing.”
When asked the
last time Nigeria actually had the smaller denominations printed, Okoroafor
promised to get the details.
He reiterated
that it was a crime to hawk or sell mint notes in the country, saying there was
an enforcement committee comprising the CBN and the security agencies to check
the menace and arrest culprits.
Okorafor said
that the CBN was collaborating with the police to ensure that Nigerian
currencies were not abused.
PUNCH
0 Comments