The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) yesterday, revealed that its RT200 programme generated $1.20 billion from repatriations at the end of the third quarter (Q3) of 2022.
This was even as the bank said it was working hard to drive the deployment of its National Domestic Card Scheme (NDCS) which will support micro payment and credit, e-government identity management, transportation, health sector and agriculture.
The apex bank stated this during a briefing following a Bankers Committee meeting which held virtually in Lagos.
Speaking on the ongoing implementation of the RT200 policy and its current run of progress, the Managing Director, Citi Bank, Ireti Samuel-Ogbu, stated that the RT200 scheme which was initiated by the CBN to generate $200 million of FX from Non-oil proceeds, is beginning to bear fruits, adding that at the end of Q3 2022, the total amount that was repatriated was $1.20billion.
“At the end of Q3 2022, the total amount that was repatriated was $1.20 billion and out of that, the total amount sold into the I&E window was $870 million which ended up in terms of rebates that was paid by the CBN. You may be familiar that rebates are paid N65 to a dollar and so N42 billion in rebates has been paid in the third quarter. We were very pleased to know that if you look at the amount of foreign currency from non-oil export proceeds, it shows a very pleasing increase and success”, Samuel-Ogbu said.
Also giving an update on the NDCS, the Managing Director, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), Mr Premier Oiwoh, said that the proposition of scheme which is being deployed to improve the payment landscape of the financial ecosystem in Nigeria, is to drive acceptance and efficiency, reduce operating cost of the card operation in the country and positioning of unique and reliable services.
Oiwoh noted that the card will be uniquely configured to address the ecosystem system issues that Nigeria has and added that the card will provide affordable pricing.
According to him, the charges on the card will be lower, and will be in Naira and not foreign exchange.
“We also expect to customize local content for the card and I mean unique content for the Nigerian landscape which supports micro payment and credit, e-government identity management, transportation, health sector and agriculture.
We expect this to reduce the dependency on cash across as the landscape will help promote the cashless initiative created by the CBN.
The operational effectiveness of the card is expected to be robust and it will drive a lot of innovation and end-to-end visibility, improve fraud management and better dispute resolution process around the card operating system. [Vanguard]
