Severe cash shortage has reportedly rocked the Nigerian banking system, Officials have said.
A senior bank official at First City Monument Bank in Abuja disclosed that officials at the Central Bank of Nigeria are also concerned with the impact of the shortages on businesses.
He said, “A deputy manager at the Central Bank asked me how we are coping with the shortage of cash. “The cash shortage is affecting companies who do transactions in millions. It does not affect small transactions like withdrawals from the ATM.”
According to the bank official, companies are already on the queue waiting for cash for their transactions.
He however noted that the cash shortage does not affect retail transactions.
A customer who came to book for N9m was told that it was not possible to book the amount he was seeking.
“We do not even have N9m available tomorrow,” the official told the customer who needed the amount the next day.
As of November 2021, the CBN said that N3.15trn cash was in circulation as against the N2.7trn in circulation in November 2020.
In an annual report recently published by the CBN, the bank had lamented that the economy was cash dominated.
CBN said, ” The growth in Currency in Circulation (CIC) reflected the continued dominance of cash in the economy.”
But despite the growth in the Currency in Circulation from N2.7trn to N3.15trn in November this year, bankers have admitted that the cash in circulation is not enough to meet their obligations to corporate customers.
DAILY GIST gathered that bank customers in some parts of the country are being stranded at various automated teller machine (ATM) points.
The development maybe not be disconnected from the the severe cash shortage that hit Nigerian banks.
