the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) may put more brand-new naira notes into circulation today through banks.
Since December 15 of last year, around 500 billion of the new notes have been put into circulation.
Nearly N1 trillion will enter circulation as part of the apex plan to pump more money today, a CBN board member confirmed yesterday.
The board member who pleaded for anonymity said: “The CBN will do the needful to ensure that innocent Nigerians’ pains are eliminated. To this end, more new naira notes will be allocated to the banks from Monday for disbursing to the public.”
He assured that:-
“the mint has adequate capacity to print the required volume of new naira notes”.
The source explained that “the volume printed must be related to what the CBN adjudges to be optimal for the economy.
“What this means is that the CBN is being careful not to flood the system with naira notes thus creating another currency control problems for it with attendant inflationary pressures”.
The CBN board member also confirmed that the apex bank will abide by the Supreme Court’s decision to pull the brake on enforcing a deadline on the deposit of old Naira notes until February 15 when the Supreme Court will make hear the suit instituted by three governors.
“We cannot really speculate on extension or no extension as the issue is before the highest court in the land,” the apex bank’s board member said.
Regarding the advice of the Council of State to the CBN to either make more new notes available or re-circulate the old banknotes alongside the existing new notes, he said that “the advice of the Council of States is well-meaning. The Council is rightly concerned about the current challenges of the naira redesign implementation caused by selfish and sadistic individuals/organisations.”