BUSINESS

Why I’m apologising to Nigerians – Emefiele

Godwin Emefiele, the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), says the electronic transfer challenges compelled him to apologise to Nigerians. He said this after the Bank’s monetary policy committee met and increased the benchmark interest rate to 18 per cent.

Emefiele admitted to the persistently failing electronic transactions, attributing it to its increasing use by bank customers.

He said, “I must apologise. Yes, online channels fail. But no doubt it is as a result of the deluge of online transactions that hit the banking industry. But it is being resolved.”

Emefiele added, “On a daily basis, our payments system management department monitor the online payment platforms so as to make sure that when there is a downtime, they are quickly resolved so that transactions can go on smoothly.”

The CBN governor equally stated that N1trillion is currently in circulation and that the Bank is weary of flooding the economy with cash.

“At the beginning of the naira redesign policy we said that there was about N3.23 trillion in circulation out of which only N500 billion was held in the banking system, while N2.73 trillion was outside the banks,” the CBN governor said.

“It was published yesterday that currency in circulation is close to N1 trillion. CBN will continue to pump the newly redesigned currency into the market.

“The truth is that at some point we will need to reassess to know whether the currency in circulation has attained an optimal level so as to put in place measures to ensure that we don’t go to the level where we were when people kept money outside the banking system for their own benefits”

 

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