By In the midst of the dissatisfying naira swap strategy of the Federal government, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele has acknowledged that the acute cash shortage hitting Nigerians is caused by a supply constraints resulting from the limited ability to issue enough fresh Naira notes.
Emefiele made the disclosure on Friday when he briefed the emergency meeting of the National Council of State, sources who attended the meeting said.
The CBN Governor told the leaders that the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc (The Mint), suffers capacity constraints, resulting in the failure to print adequate new notes to replace the old N200, N500 and 1,000 notes.
“The Mint has run out of papers to print N500 and 1,000 notes. They have placed orders with a German firm and De La Rue of the UK (for papers) but they have been placed on a long waiting list, so their orders cannot be met now.
“The Mint had received CBN’s request to print 70million copies of the new notes, totalling N126billion to be pumped into circulation by today (yesterday), The Mint doesn’t have the capacity.”
Despite acknowledging the supply issues, Mr. Emefiele also bemoaned the actions of banking sector saboteurs who, in his opinion, are hoarding the new notes.
