The Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) has not printed the small naira denominations for about a
year, causing the scarcity of the notes in the economy, an investigation by the
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) has revealed.
Sources at the CBN hinted that for a year now, the apex bank did
not award contract for the printing of the notes such as N5, N10, N20 and N50
usually done abroad.
It was gathered that the recently printed notes in circulation,
N200, N500 and N1,000 were produced by the Nigeria Security Printing and Minting plc (NSPM).
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 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
NSPM,” the source said.
A worker at the First Bank of
Nigeria Limited told NAN that throughout the 2016 festive seasons, there
were hardly smaller currency notes to give to customers.
“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,” he said.
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