The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi yesterday said that the apex bank might review upward theCash Reserve Requirement (CRR) on public sector deposit from 75 per cent to 100 per cent.
Sanusi who disclosed this at the Udo Udoma and Bello Osagia 30th anniversary lecture yesterday in Lagos said that the apex bank is likely to raise the CRR on private sector deposit from 12 per cent to 15 per cent.
According to him, we are going to review upward CRR for both private and public deposit if it is exactly what would make the nation’s currency to be stable.
Sanusi said that the biggest problem in the macro economy was the threat of the exchange rate, stressing that while the government’s spending increase on daily basis the excess crude oil account fall from $11.5 billion to $2.5 billion in one year.
Expressing the need for the country to ensure stability of the currency, he said there was need to block all the linkages in the oil sector in order to build up our external reserve. “We are not working to have a strong or weak naira but we are only interested to have a stable currency that would encourage investment in the country.” He said that given the dwindling revenue from the oil and the impact of external reserve, the available options to the CBN and monetary policy committee is the review CRR to defend the naira.
The CBN governor, however, said that the share services would help banks to curtail their over heads cost and sustained their profitability, adding that initially the cost of currency management in Nigeria was N49 billion but it has been reduced to N35 billion in 2013 and it is expected to decline further to N30 billion in this current year.
“In 2009 when I became the governor, of CBN, the cost of currency management was N49 billion, in 2013′ it was N35 billion and 2014 it will be N30 billion, we spend less money in printing, transporting, management, we got a centralised cash module, we got shared services”
