The Senate on Wednesday at plenary urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to considerably adjust withdrawal limits in response to public outcry on its proposed weekly withdrawal on cashless policy.
The Senate’s resolution followed the adoption of recommendations of a committee on banking, insurance and other financial matters on the CBN’s recent policy on cash withdrawal limits.
The Senate also urged its committee to continue to intensify its oversight of the CBN and the apex bank’s commitment to flexible adjustment of the cash withdrawal limits and periodically report the outcome to plenary.
It also resolved to support the CBN in the continuous implementation of transformational payments and financial industry initiatives in line with its mandate in accordance with the CBN Act.
Earlier, chairman of the committee, Uba Sani (APC-Kaduna) while presenting a report of the committee said that there are many misconceptions on the cashless policy.
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He said that the currency denominations of N5, N10, N50 and N100 remain legal tender and were unaffected by the naira redesign policy and were available for use across the country.
According to him, there are currently no processing fees applied to cash deposits, saying that unlimited amounts can be deposited without charge to enable seamless and unrestricted deposit of notes affected by currency redesign.
Sani said there have been significant achievements recorded in the Nigerian payment system since the cashless policy was introduced in 2012.
He said Nigeria has been adjudged African’s undisputed real time and digital payments leader in real time transaction in 2021.
This, he said, translated to the 6th in terms of the world’s most developed real-time payments behind only India, China, Thailand, Brazil and South Korea.
He said the off take of digital and real time payment also helped Nigeria unlock 3.2 billion dollars of additional economic output in 2021, representing about 0.6 per cent of the country’s GDP.
However, some senators, before the adoption of the recommendations of the report, raised concern over the planned implementation of CBN’s cash withdrawals limit, while some supported its implementation, saying that it was in the ultimate good of the country.
The Senate also confirmed President Muhammadu Buhari’s nomination of Aisha Ahmad and Edward Adamu for appointments, as deputy governors of CBN.
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