Mutilated lower naira notes, fight for market shares collapse FMCG sales—Survey
Contrary to observations that small businesses are rising to challenge sales trend in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector, disrupting offerings of several consumer goods’ firms with relatively cheaper prices, rising abandonment of transactions on grounds of non acceptability of badly mutilated lower naira notes is causing more damage to sales currently.
Market survey by Business Hilights Intelligence Unit (BHIU) across the nation in the month of September showed that over 75 per cent of attempted sales of FCMGs failed due to either rejection of change of a lower naira or non acceptance of lower naira notes that smell and highly mutilated in the markets.
Findings show that even though the economy is said to be recovering from recession, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), inflation and slow economic recovery appear to have weakened consumers’ purchasing power.
Checks at several commercial banks on why their staff are no more accepting mutilated notes as deposits from customers’ showed that they are working under strong warning from their superiors not to collect mutilated moneys as deposits until the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) reverses self on the hike in the amount banks pay to return boxes of bad notes.
One of the senior staff at one of the new generation banks confided in our correspondent that “The CBN should be held responsible for the excess mutilated naira notes in circulation because it hiked tariff commercial banks pay for the return of mutilated and collection of fresh mints.”
“Banks cannot pay the new tariff and still remain in business. It has been the dirty of nation’s apex bank to do that not by wasting public funds in going around markets and exchanging new notes with old notes, but by going through a global standard model of exchanging the notes through commercial banks.
Business Hilights recalls that in the last few months, the CBN had been crowding from one state popular market to the other, sharing and exchanging new notes for old mutilated notes, but the impacts has been abysmal to stand the heat and confusion in markets over mutilated lower naira notes.
