N5, N10, N20, N50 paper notes coming, says CBN

POLYMER notes – the glossy currency notes launched on September 30, 2009 by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to mark Nigeria’s 49th Independence anniversary – are to be withdrawn from circulation.

The notes were introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) when Prof Charles Chukwuma Soludo was the governor. They replaced paper notes.

But Deputy CBN Governor Tunde Lemo has hinted of a plan to stop the printing of small denominations of the naira in polymer notes because they fade quickly.

Lemo spoke yesterday in Washington DC, the United States (U.S.) on the sideline of the ongoing Spring Meeting of the World Bank and the IMF.

A note-printing firm – Securency, partly owned by Reserve Bank of Australia, was contracted in 2006 to produce the polymer notes.

It cost the Federal Government some N750 million.

But, going by what the CBN Deputy Governor said, the production of the paper notes will begin in two months.

Lemo recalled that when the CBN was going to introduce the polymer currencies, its search showed that they could last longer than ordinary paper notes.

The banker said that the CBN had awarded a contract for the printing of the higher denomination notes to a foreign company because of low capacity at the Nigerian Printing and Minting Company NPMC.

The CBN will begin to receive the fresh notes from June.

On the campaign on the careful handling of the naira, Lemo said that it was unfortunate that it was not successful, but noted that it is a criminal act to abuse the naira – going by the CBN Act.

According to Lemo, the CBN has urged the police to step up its surveillance to reduce the abuse of the naira.