Sep 18 (Lagos) - Starting today, banks in Nigeria have been instructed by CBN to charge 3% on withdrawals and 2% on deposits on N 500K for individuals and N 3 M for corporate accounts.
These charges are in addition to already existing charges.
This is the implementation of the cashless policy and will commence from big states like Lagos, Ogun, Kano, Rivers, Anambra among others. The policy will be implemented nationwide in Q1 of 2020.
One thing the CBN should keep in mind is that the Naira has devalued so much that these limits of 500 K and 3 Million for individual and corporate accounts respectively are small amounts in Dollar or Sterling terms. Nigeria is a big country and are these limits not very low considering the monumental devaluations that have taken place over the past 5 years. Economy needs support and people need to be encouraged to save. Not the opposite at this point.
Bad policies can make a country un-investable and that is not what we want to be. If someone comes to Nigeria with 1500 dollars and goes to a bank to convert, deposit and spend, can you imagine the difficulty that person is going to face. At the same time we need people to come and invest in Nigeria. Maybe this Policy has good intentions but it is going to be too suffocating to business environment in the opinion of the writer of this article.
reporting for easykobo.com on Wednesday, Sep 18 2019 from Lagos, Nigeria