The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has concluded plans to extend the cashless policy to Rivers, Kano, Anambra and Abia States as well as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) from July 1.

CBN Deputy Governor (Operations), Mr. Tunde Lemo, told THISDAY in an exclusive interview in Abuja that the aforementioned states and the FCT were chosen because of the large volume of cash transactions in some of their major cities such as Aba, Kano, Port Harcourt and Onitsha.

The cashless policy, whose implementation began in Lagos in January, last year, is aimed at reducing the dominance of cash in the system. The policy specifies penal charges for individuals and corporate organisations that want to withdraw or lodge cash above prescribed limits.

Under the policy, the CBN pegged the daily cumulative cash withdrawal or deposit limit for individual accounts at N500,000 per day and N3 million per day for corporate accounts.

Lemo, in the interview, explained that the policy earlier planned to be implemented in other states in January 2013 was deferred due to some infrastructural challenges.
He said: “When we talk about nationwide roll-out, we are also being careful to ensure that we make use of resources in a smart way. Cash doesn’t flow the same volume in every state of the federation. What we would do in July is to look at those other market clusters where large amount of volume is transacted and add them to Lagos.

“It is cheaper that way because the resources you need to cover the entire 923 square kilometres in Nigeria are huge. But you can achieve almost the same thing by looking at the pattern of cash distribution and you can cover about 90 per cent of that by adding about five more locations to Lagos. That is: Abuja, Kano, Aba, Port Harcourt and Onitsha.

“That is basically what we want to do. We would get those five clusters and add them to Lagos. When we add those five locations to Lagos, then we would have covered about 90 per cent of the cash volume. We would see how far that goes and once we perfect that, we then begin to look at contiguous market centres around these locations and we would gradually cover the entire country.”

Lemo also said the cashless policy had been successful in Lagos, adding that the number of Point of Sale (PoS) machines in Lagos has increased significantly from about 5,000 when the policy took off last year, to over 150,000.

How is that an evidence of anything?

Afam4eva: How is that an evidence of anything?

Cash does not flow from poverty. It flows from relative richness. Got it, Afam nwa Enugu?

If Lagos is the best (and I agree it is) then it follows that these other states follow after Lagos; they are the better than the rest.

Nah! Akin Egba,i suggest you modify your heading. It doesn't correlate.

Good work,lamido!

Afam4eva: How is that an evidence of anything?

To drastically reduce the number of fake Naira notes in circulation from those states.

Akin-Egba:


Cash does not flow from poverty. It flows from relative richness. Got it, Afam nwa Enugu?

If Lagos is the best (and I agree it is) then it follows that these other states follow after Lagos; they are the better than the rest.

Akin, where have you been since?, wow, really missed your educative posts. Nice to note you are back.

Akin egba is back aka Mekus, omongbati etc Happy to see you bro

Akin-Egba:
Aba= SE
Onitsha= SE
Lagos= SW with very, very significant SE economic influence
PH= SS with very, very, very significant SE influence
Kano= N with some not insignificant SE influence

Everywhere is SE, SE, SE. I go die oh!

Where is GEEZ (Yoruba chicken Gizard) and Eko Ile and their Ibadan, Oshogbo, Abeokuta etc, blah! blah!! blah!!!?

mtchew

alj harem:

You've been on and off...hope you are good?

ilugunboy:

You've been on and off...hope you are good?

Yeah bro I am good, just been very busy that's all although I am still very much around but can't really comment due to limited time at hand.

Really
This wan fit make front page?
See the people wey get am for money
Na dem dey Lagos and Abuja and Kano too