IN compliance with the March 3, 2023 Supreme Court judgment, which extended the validity of the Central Bank of Nigeria currency redesign policy to December 31, this year, some banks across the country have started paying out the old N500 and N1,000 notes to their customers. 9NewsNigeria findings however, revealed partial compliance as some banks have not followed suit, maintaining that they are awaiting official directive from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to do so.
The banks that were issuing the old banknotes to their customers yesterday include Guaranty Trust Bank, GTBank, Access Bank, Sterling Bank and Union Bank.
Confirming this development, a customer of Access Bank said that he withdrew N20,000 and was paid with the old N500 and N1,000 notes.
However, an official of the bank, who spoke on condition of anonymity denied that the bank has commenced issuing the old notes to customers, as the CBN has not authorised the banks to do so.
Speaking to 9NewsNigeria, a staff GTB, who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the development: “Yes, we paid out N500 and N1,000 to customers today (yesterday).”Another source close to GTB told 9NewsNigeria that the bank received an informal approval from the CBN before dispensing the old N500 and N1,000 notes to customers.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), yesterday, put loan recovery under its Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) at N503 billion, representing 52.39 percent as at end February, 2023.
Disclosing this in a statement yesterday, by the Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department of CBN, Dr. AbdulMumin Isa, said the apex bank remained committed to its developmental mandate of stimulating access to finance for the real sector of the economy. Giving further details, Isa said the apex bank had released the sum of N1.079 trillion, as at February 28, 2023, out of which, N960 billion was due for repayment and a total of N503 billion has been repaid.He added that the CBN ABP had supported about 4.57 million smallholder farmers at the end of February, 2023, who cultivated over 6.02 million hectares of 21 commodities across the country. He listed the commodities as rice, wheat, cowpea, millet, maize, cotton, fish, soya bean, poultry, cassava, groundnut, ginger, sorghum, oil palm, cocoa, sesame, tomato, castor seed, yellow pepper, onions, and cattle/dairy.
