The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Godwin Emefiele said that the apex bank has ordered 500 million new notes.
Aisha Ahmed, deputy governor CBN, Financial System Stability who represented the governor at the House of Representatives plenary session in Abuja, disclosed this on Thursday.
The deputy governor who went to brief the lawmakers on the new monetary policies insisted that the timing for the implementation of the policies especially the cash withdrawal limit was neither here nor there, adding that the 90 days notice in the estimation of the bank was enough to get Nigerians sensitized.
She also disclosed that the CBN was partnering the National Orientation Agency, NOA, and other similar bodies to fully create the needed public enlightenment on the new policies.
Ahmed in the course of answering some questions from the lawmakers, said: “You asked a question. We ordered 500 million pieces of currency from the Mint. That is what has been ordered.
“You said this will mean that people will start losing their jobs because people would stop going to the banks. No, I think this will create more opportunities, not just for people working in the banks to retool. Technology change and innovation is a phenomenon happening all over the world. Of course, it is changing the types of jobs that people are doing. But it is also opening up new opportunities for them to do other things. So, I don’t see this as going to limit that. Indeed, the examples of agents (mobile bank agents) is a strong example that says that we created something, a platform, a business that was not there 10 years ago because we needed to solve a problem around ensuring that all areas in Nigeria were covered financially. That is just a small example of what technology can do. So, I don’t see this policy as making people lose their jobs.
She also enumerated the various types of benefits that will come with this new development. “The truth is that for any initiative, there will be challenges. What matters is that the benefits must outweigh the risks. The CBN has an active consumer protection department that is looking at issues of fraud, issues of cyber security and issues of bank conduct in terms of how they charge customers and every time, we hold the banks to account when they flout those rules.
“You talked about the e-Naira and the regulatory backing. The e-Naira is a digital representation of the physical Naira. And so, it does have backing in law from our perspective. That is our answer to that.
“On counterfeiting, the question was if the sensitisation is not late. I think sensitisation is something that has to happen through it all. You cannot start with sensitisation and then leave it. Before the new note came out, we did inform the public and we started our sensitisation. Now that it is out and it is being used side by side with the old notes, we are continuing that sensitisation.
“I can quickly address the question about the National Orientation Agency. We are trying to partner the NOA in order to deliver the messages that we want to deliver to the grassroots. And we are not only partnering them. We are partnering many other stakeholders.
“In terms of timing, it is neither here nor there. I think we felt that 90 days based on what we know of official access points, availability of points for people to go and pay in their funds and the fact that we actually released the new notes earlier than planned, we felt that we were in a good position to conclude at the timelines that we gave. We are open to feedback and people’s views on that.”
According to The Vanguard, the CBN boss stated that the goal of the policy is also to reduce incidences of crime such as armed robbery, kidnapping, terrorism financing, advance fee fraud, graft, ransom payment and extortions, etc;
Others are deepening the Nigerian payment system through more innovation and cheaper costs; Financial inclusion, the route to scaling financial inclusion is through electronic channels. Mobile phone penetration in Nigeria is 152m (according to NCC).
Responding to a question from a lawmaker on the duration of the policy, she said the policy was indefinite, adding that it was going on simultaneously nationwide.
He said: “This will be indefinite. This is it going forward, and you asked the question, will it be limited to some certain states? No. It will be nationwide.”
Earlier, the CBN governor, who traced the origin of the cashless policy to 2012, said that new frontiers had since been opened to give the financial hemisphere a facelift.
He said: “Our policy pronouncement on December 5, was a continuation of the cashless policy that we started 10 years ago and it was in recognition of the positive changes that have happened in the financial and payment system since the cashless policy was first launched. Some of these changes include one: a wide proliferation of financial access point. In 2012, thereabouts, we were still talking about bank branches as the only source of access to financial services.
“Today, we have a very robust payment system that include bank branches, branches of micro-finance banks, POS machines, ATM machines, agent banking, E-Naira and many other options. To be specific, between the bank and the micro-finance banks, we have 6,500 locations, 900,000 POS terminals, 14,000 ATMs across the country and 1.4 million agents nationwide and every single local government in Nigeria has agent represented. We also have a proliferation of electronic transactions. Just by way of quick example, in 2012, we had N48 billion in POS transactions. Today, we have N6 trillion in POS transactions.
“On electronic transfers, we had N3 trillion in 2012. Today, we have N300 trillion as at October, 2022. That’s a 7,000 percent increase. We have also seen an improvement in financial inclusion to 54.1 percent and lastly, perhaps, more importantly, we have seen the evolution of the Nigerian payment system on the global stage.
“Nigeria is judged 6th in the world for instant real payment and we are only behind countries like India, china, Thailand, Brazil and South Korea. We are the only African country in the top 10 and this has been as a result of some of the initiatives that have gone on. Also, electronic payment and realtime data payments have been estimated to contribute about 0.67 percent to our GDP.”