It is a few days from Christmas and there seems to be a shortage of cash in the commercial bank. Expectedly, POS operators are already taking advantage of the situation to increase their charges. Some of the POS operators told our reporter that the bank no longer gives the required amount of money requested, as a result, they now buy money from traders to stay in business. Some of them charge N100 for one thousand naira transactions.
In the meantime, a lecturer of economics at the University of Port Harcourt Peter Medee is blaming the shortage of cash on the monetary policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Dr. Peter Medee told our reporter that the policy is usually introduced when the economy is overheated as a result of excessive spending. He said the current situation may not be unconnected with the cash policy introduced by the Buhari-led administration. He further explained that what Nigeria is experiencing now, unfortunately, is a fallout of a very hash redesigning policy of the last administration. He said that the last administration underwent a kind of redesigning of currency not to solve economic problems but according to them, to solve political problems and security problems. Political problems as to curb vote buying while security problems as to handling ransom payments for kidnapping, meanwhile Nigeria has economic problem of inflation and unemployment.
The lecturer of economics Dr. Peter Medee however said that some persons will now be trading the naira, explaining that this is the time when demand for the naira is very high, and because it is high, there is high hoarding of the currency to create artificial scarcity so that they will be able to use that to sell the currency. Dr. Medee further said that even though the CBN has said there is enough cash in circulation, we are not seeing it, adding that the cash has been withdrawn from circulation for people who want to make excessive gain from it in terms of exchanging it, and that is as a result of the spill off of redesigning the naira that was warmly targetted at the Nigeria economy.
