Earlier today, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (GTBank) sent out emails to its customers reminding them that they have until September 2nd, 2019 to deposit their mutilated naira notes at the bank. Failure to do this could warrant unwanted consequences.
According to the email from GTB, this is in line with the Central Bank of Nigeria‘s effort to get rid of mutilated, defaced, and unfit naira notes from circulation. The CBN’s Clean Note Policy was announced in April this year and lauded by several stakeholders, including the Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria, ABCON.
It is expected that strict adherence to this CBN policy will help guarantee public confidence in the naira by ensuring that only high quality and clean notes are allowed to circulate in the economy.
[READ: CBN takes a proactive step by introducing Clean Notes Policy]
Why you must adhere: Nairametrics contacted the CBN to get more information on this matter. Specifically, we sought to clarify what would happen to Nigerians who fail to deposit their mutilated naira notes by September 2nd. Responding to this inquiry, a representative of the apex bank informed that anybody who fails to comply with the Clean Note Policy will have to bear the cost of losing the value of their money, seeing as such money will no longer be acceptable for transactions.
To avoid this from happening, therefore, Nigerians must hurry now to deposit any unfit naira notes in their possessions. In the same vein, they must refuse to collect such defaced money going forward.
In the meantime, commercial banks should put in more effort to ensure that henceforth, mutilated naira notes are painstakingly filtered out of circulation. This is imperative, seeing as commercial banks have often been accused by the CBN of deliberately mixing unfit notes and re-circulating them instead of sorting out the bad ones and returning them to CBN for destruction.
