Currency in circulation drops by N4.59bn in March

The quantity of currency in circulation in the country dropped for the third consecutive month, dropping by N4.59bn to N3.24 trillion in March from N3.25 trillion in February 2022.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) disclosed this in its updated Money and Credit Statistics on its website.

In January, the apex bank reported that there was N3.29 trillion in Circulation.

The CBN defined the currency in Circulation as currency outside the vaults of the Central Bank; that is, all legal tender currency in the hands of the general public and in the vaults of the Deposit Money Banks.

In recent months CBN had embarked on several intervention policies which pushed currency in Circulation to its highest level in history in December 2021.

However, in the following three consecutive months, it has recorded a decline, dropping by N37.13 billion in January and N37.84 billion in February 2022.

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CBN data also showed that credit to the private sector rose Month on Month (MoM), by 1.07 per cent to N36.37 trillion in March from N35.18 trillion in January 2022.

The reported figure by CBN is the highest credit by banks to the private sector as the apex bank maintained its 65 per cent Loan-to-deposit (LDR) policy that sustained banks’ lending to the real sector.

Aside from banks’ lending to the private sector increasing, the banks’ lending to the government also grew by 10.8 per cent to N16.3 trillion in March 2022 from N14.72 trillion reported by the CBN in February this year.

The data also revealed that net domestic credit also rose MoM by 3.9 per cent to N52.69 trillion in March 2022 from N50.7 trillion in February 2022, signifying an uptick in economic activities.