Unimpressed with the circulation of the new naira notes, Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, says it will impose sanction on commercial banks hoarding the new banknotes.
Ahead the deadline set by the apex bank to phase out the old notes, Sources informed the magazine that the Godwin Emefiele-led CBN is not happy with daily customers’ complaints that they don’t have access to the new banknotes of N200, N500 and N1000.
“The CBN is particularly distraught with reports that some commercial banks have not started loading their ATMs with the new notes despite directive from the CBN last week. The daily complaints by customers have reached unimaginable level. I hope some banks are not trying to frustrate our efforts to make the currency available to the public before as we try to phase out th3 old notes by January 31,” a top source in CBN said on Friday.
The magazine reported last week of complaints by commercial banks in the country that they have not received the new bank notes from the CBN. ” We will make the new notes available to customers as soon as we get allocation from CBN. We also need to configure our ATMs in readiness to dispense the new notes,” a commercial bank source said last week.
But the apex bank said some banks have refused to collect their allocation, a situation that may have led to the scarcity of their banknotes across the country.
This was disclosed on Thursday by Osita Nwanisiobi, CBN ‘s Director, Corporate Communications Department at Aba, Abia State during a sensitization for traders in the commercial states.
Contraryvto speculation, Nwasinobi said the deadline for phasing out old naira notes remained sacrosant, adding that the policy was meant to reduce the money in circulation.
He noted that close to N2.76 trillion out of N3.26 cash in circulation is outside the banking system.
Meanwhile analysts insist that the CBN will have to do more in making the new currency available to commercial banks, when this is done, the apex bank would have done it’s part, and it will be easy to bring out the hammer on erring banks.
