The Managing Director of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company has stated that three billion pieces of currency notes are printed yearly by the company. Mr Ehi Okoyomon on Thursday spoke at an e-Payment Thought Leadership Breakfast series organized by Intermarc consulting and said while a portion of this figure is kept in vaults the rest is circulated in the economy through the purchase of goods and services, tax payments, and other purposes.
Mr Okoyomon also stated that the CBN’s cashless sceme would reduce the amount of naira to be printed by The Mint in coming years and thus reduce loss of naira due to bad handling. He didn’t state how much Nigeria currently spends on printing notes but noted that Nigeria is one of the five highest spenders in the world on currency printing, with the other four being the US, Indonesia, India and China.
He enjoined the CBN, banks, service providers and e-payment operators to join hands and work with the government to make the cashless scheme work smoothly.
The cashless scheme restricts withdrawals by individuals and corporate customers to daily limits of N150,000 and N1,000,000 respectively. Withdrawals above these limits will attract surcharges of N100,000 and N200,000 from individuals and corporate customers respectively,  and third cheques above N150,000 will only be paid through the clearing house as opposed to over the counter.