The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Friday said that the
new smaller denomination notes that will come in paper
form would be in circulation before December.
Mr Tunde Lemo,
Deputy Governor,
Operations, said this while briefing newsmen on the
sideline of the ongoing Annual meeting of the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund.
The smaller notes are N5, N10, N20 and N50 notes.
“The smaller denomination notes are being supplied by the
printers and before December, you will no longer see
tattered notes all over.
“As I said, I have apologised to Nigerians that the reason
we had old notes that are still in circulation was because of
the issues around Project Cure.
“We had earlier thought last year that we will transmit to a
better note family which we code-named Project Cure.
“But because of the issues around N5,000 notes and the
resentments of changing the N5, N10 and N20 to coins, we
had to go back to the drawing board and that was what has
caused the delay.
“According to him, the new smaller denominations will be
in paper form with their features.
“They will be on paper since we didn’t succeed in
convincing Nigerians that those smaller denominations
should be in coins.
“But there will be a time in the future when we will all
understand why they have to be coined.
“But now, we are back to status quo ante; that is they will
reappear in the old form that they were except that they are
going to be in paper not polymer.”
Lemo said that since 2009 the spending on printing of
currency had been on the decline.
He attributed that to the efficiency in distribution of the
currency and printing of more of the higher denomination
notes.
“We used to spend N13 printing N1000 notes, if we had
succeeded in printing N5,000 notes, we would have spent
only N18; that meant that would have also reduced the cost
of printing.
“That was the message we were trying to transmit to
Nigerians,” he added
On the difference in the cost of printing in polymer and
paper, he said that it was cheaper printing in polymer.
“We would have spent less printing polymer because
polymer substrate lasts four times longer than paper and it
costs only 150 per cent more.
“Unfortunately, whereas the substrate lasts four times
longer, the ink fades pretty faster and so what’s the use
of the substrate whose ink has faded and that was partly
why we disengaged from polymer.”
On the cashless policy, he said that there had been
improvement in the use of electronic channels for money
transactions in the country.
Lemo said the volume of electronic fund transfer
transactions were three times more than the volume of
cheques.
He added that N11 billion transactions were made through
mobile payment last month, adding that more activity had
been going on through the electronic channel unlike before.
(NAN)

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