The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has disclosed that it no longer prints the naira notes abroad as all currencies are printed by the Nigeria Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC).
The Director of Currency Operations of the CBN, Mrs. Prinscilla Eleje, disclosed this at the launch of the “Clean Note Policy and Bank Note Fitness Guideline” in Lagos, yesterday.
It would be recalled that Daily Trust had in July 2018 indicated in a story that two years since the CBN’s deadline to stop printing all naira notes abroad, Nigeria was still spending billions of naira to import minted naira notes.
A source at the NSMPC, which is a subsidiary of the CBN, told Daily Trust that the mint only printed denominations of N5 to N50, while the bigger currency denominations were imported abroad.
NSPMC produces currency notes and coins for the CBN and a wide range of security documents for the federal, state and local government establishments, commercial banks and blue chip companies.
According to the NSPM website, the company has the ability to print over 40 million notes weekly.
However, the high cost of printing banknotes forced the CBN to refrain from giving contracts for their production. The cost of printing N50 is almost the same as N1,000. Printing small denominations costs more than the value and with the present economic situation, it makes sense to print higher notes which can be done locally by NSPMC, the source noted.
Mrs. Eleje, in her address to the gathering said: “the CBN no longer prints the naira abroad as all currencies are printed by NSMPC.”
The Clean Note Policy and Banknote Guideline provides a unified standard for the circulation of only clean and fit notes.
Eleje, who also disclosed that the CBN had reduced the cost of replacing mutilated currencies from N50 to N5, urged banks to accept mutilated and over-circulated notes and bring them forward to the apex bank for replacement.
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