The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, on Friday made elaborate clarifications on why the apex bank came up with sundry monetary policy measures in recent weeks, saying that the steps are intended to sustain transparency in financial system transactions, deepen financial inclusion and give the cashless policy a new push.
Emefiele made these remarks at the end of the two-day meeting of the apex bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in Abuja.
While justifying the recent policy stance of the banking sector regulatory financial institution in recent months, the banker said the overarching reason why the latest measures were introduced was to promote transparency in the financial system and deepen financial inclusion nationwide.
According to him, since the cashless policy was launched about eight years ago, its implementation had led to remarkable transformation of the banking system transactions with the attendant positive implications for the nation’s economy.
He, therefore, restated the apex bank’s commitment to the implementation of the recent policy guidelines, including those relating to payment of charges on cash withdrawals and deposits at a certain thresholds, to logical conclusion in order to increase financial inclusion rate and consolidate on the successes recorded so far on the cashless policy implementation.
The Governor explained: “We need to really be transparent by saying that we should go cashless in Nigeria. Unfortunately data revealed that between 2012 and 2014 the cost of currency management in Nigeria reduced by 13 percent due to the introduction of the cashless policy,
“By 2015, following the withdrawal of deposit charge, the cost of currency management has continued to increase year by year at an average rate of 33 percent. Since the cashless policy was first launched, electronic transactions have increased within the economy and I will give examples.
“For example, POS transactions increased by 4,692 percent and we are talking of about N2.27 trillion from just N48.6 billion in 2012. In the same manner, electronic transactions increased significantly by 1,967 percent and I mean N76.5 trillion from just N3.8 trillion in 2012 to N80.42 trillion in 2018.
“Cheque transactions have reduced by 32 percent from about 7.2 trillion to about N5.3 trillion in 2018. Financial transactions points through ATMs, POS, Agents and Mobile Payments that we are talking about have also witnessed exponential growth..
“So what we are saying is that we have provided alternative channels and people have embraced it. Another data survey conducted before we even came up with the latest policy showed that up to 95% of cash deposited or withdrawn from banks are not within this threshold. It is only about five percent of such transactions fall within the threshold of charge payments on deposits or withdrawals”, Emefiele added.
According to him, the financial inclusion drive has also recorded significant improvement in the country as the latest research conducted by EfiNA, showed that financial inclusion increased to about 65 percent on a national average from just 40 percent 18 months ago.
Emefiele advised bank customers to disregard misgivings in some quarters that the policy measures would hurt them, assuring that contrary to such insinuations the measures are introduced for the benefit of the customers and the nation’s economy.
