…weekend service speeds up supply
As at Monday, Nigerians are getting significant relief from the cash crunch which followed the invalidation of the old N1,000 and N500 denomination of currency notes in the wake of a currency redesign exercise January 31.
This followed substantial flows of the said old N1,000 and N500 notes to the commercial banks from the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and express instructions that the commercial banks should open to customers last Saturday and Sunday and rapidly dispense the notes over the counter and through Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).
The said currency notes previously invalidated by the CBN had been revalidated by the Supreme Court in a ruling but some silence and poorly perceived messages had the publics apparently confused and in doubt.
This led to hesitance and outright rejection of the bills, until the CBN and the Federal Government made more explicit statements acceeding to the authority of the Supreme Court ruling.
Customers thronged commercial banks and ATMs across the country through the weekend and into Monday and received their cash in incremental volumes, larger than the previous pittances of between N2,000 and N5,000 of weeks and days past.
By Monday, banks were dispensing from as little as N5,000 to as much as N200,000 in the old notes, especially across the counter.
Also customer turn-around time and cash collection success rate at the banks had improved significantly, despite the long queues.
This was the case in Benin, the Edo Stat capital, as elsewhere around the country.
One significant sign of better cashflow to customers was that Point of Sale (PoS) operators who previously charged up to 30 percent commissions on cash drawn by desperate Nigerians, lowerered their commissions to ten percent and in many cases were hard put to find customers.
