Mohammed Shosanya
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN),Mr. Godwin Emefiele,has begged Nigerians to forgive him over the huge transaction failures on ac ount of the current currency designation policy in the country
He admitted challenges faced by bank customers following the limit on cash withdrawals in the country
Emefiele spoke in Abuja,where he also said the continued upward risk to price development around expectation for the removal of fuel subsidy as well as rising prices of other energy sources, continued exchange rate pressure and uncertain climatic conditions further justified the need to purse a moderate contractionary monetary policy.
“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.
“On a daily basis, our Payment 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 said.
He noted that the bank retained other monetary policy parameter including bank’s Cash Reserve Requirement (CRR) at a minimum of 32.5 per cent as well as the Liquidity Ratio (LR) at 30 per cent.
The CBN governor further explained that the decision to raise interest rate was taken to further rein in inflation.
Emefiele said the Nigerian banking sector has had no contagion as a result of the recent banking failures in the United States and Switzerland.
He explained this was made possible by the prudential guidelines already put in place to ensure that financial institutions are able to ward-off any such risk exposures.
Emefiele said through the various prudential requirement in place, and to act as insulation from global shocks, banks’ cash reserve deposits had increased to a whopping N14 trillion.
He also disclosed that the CBN Digital Currency, also known as eNaira had witnessed significant adoption as value of transactions currently stood at N22 billion with 13 million wallets created.
He added that total disbursement under the Achor Borrower’s Programme (ABP) stood at about N1.09 trillion to date.