At least N58.618 billion was spent in 2020 to print 2.518 billion of naira notes, valued at N1.06 trillion, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said.
The bank revealed this in its 2020 currency operation annual report released on Thursday.
The CBN report shows a decrease in the bank’s expenditure on currency printing, which stood at N75.5 billion, in 2019 and N64.0 billion, in 2018.
“The total cost incurred on printing banknotes in 2020 amounted to N58.6 billion compared with N75.5 billion in 2019. This indicated a decrease of N16.9 billion or 28.84 percent,” the document reads.
“The NSPM Plc was awarded the contract for the production of the entire indent. At end of December 2020, NSPM Plc had delivered 100 percent of the approved indent.
“The currency indent approved for 2020 was 2,518 billion pieces of banknotes, consisting of various denominations with a value of N1.06 trillion compared with 3,830 billion pieces valued at N1.340 trillion in 2019.”
“This indicates a decrease of 34.25 percent and 20.71 percent in terms of volume and value, respectively.”
CBN also put the total stock of currency (issuable & non-issuable) in its vaults at the end of December 2020 at 2.747 billion pieces compared to 2.641 billion pieces in 2019.
This represented an increase of 105.73 million pieces or 4 percent, the report said.
“At end of December 2020, the total issuable notes (newly printed notes and Counted Audited Clean notes) was 592.94 million pieces compared with 726.43 million pieces in 2019, representing a decrease of 133.49 million pieces or 18.38 percent,” the report added.
It also indicated that a total of $1.830 billion was procured as forex throughout 2020.
“This value represents a decrease of USD2,120.00 million or 53.67 per cent relative to the USD3,950.00 million procured in 2019,” the CBN said.
“This was used to fund Bureaux De Change (BDC) operations, payment of estacode and Personal Travel Allowances (PTA) to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).”
