CBN Governor, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has said that redesigning the country’s currency would curb the activities of counterfeiters.
He said this in Abuja on Wednesday during an interactive session with members of the House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Currency.
"One of the reasons we wanted to redesign the currency a few months ago was because many of our notes had been in existence for upward of eight or even ten years.
"New best practice is that within a period of five to eight years, you redesign the currency because after that period counterfeiters tend to catch up," he said.
He stressed that to redesign the currency was in line with global best practices.
He noted that the recent proposal to redesign the currency was rejected.
The CBN boss acknowledged that there were negligible cases of counterfeiting of the naira adding that having counterfeit notes on Automated Teller Machines (ATM) equipped with censors were rare.
On high interest rates, Sanusi said the CBN Act limited its duties to the delivery of price stability; protection of the external value of the currency; managing the country’s reserves and ensuring financial stability.
The apex bank governor stated that the delivery of low interest rates was not feasible due to the harsh business environment in the country.
"How low do you have to bring down interest rates for banks to lend to a manufacturer that does not have power; or for a bank to lend to a company that operates in an environment that does not have security?
"It is not about moving interest rate down or up; most of the small and medium small scale enterprises do not have access to credits because the environment does not allow businesses to thrive."
Sanusi held that the likelihood of the interest rates coming down in the current environment was low.
He said the apex bank had put several monetary measures in place to ensure stability in the economy.
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