The Nigeria Association of Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (NASMEs), has appealed to the Federal Government to extend use of the N1,000 and N500 notes as legal tenders.
The National President of the association, Dr Abdulrashid Yerima, made the appeal on Sunday in Abuja.
He decried the effect of the scarcity of Naira on the activities of nano businesses as well as the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country.
According to Yerima, our members are claiming that they have lost more than N10 billion cumulatively since the beginning of this cashless policy.
It could be recalled that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Oct. 26, 2022 announced the introduction of redesigned N200, N500 and N1,000 notes into the country’s financial system.
However, on Thursday, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the CBN to allow use of old N200 notes and redesigned N200, N500 and N1000 notes concurrently.
The president said that only the old N200 notes among the three redesigned currencies would continue to be legal tender till April 10.
But since the notes were unveiled as well as the return of the old N200 notes for 60 days, Nigerians across different parts of the country had been having difficulty in accessing it from banks and ATM cash points.
“It is a good policy but not well timed.
“We have the nano because it is a one man business, either he is a welder or a dry cleaner or a woman into salon business or a barber in that category.
“And then we have the micro and this policy is hitting them more than others because they are trading with cash.
“People go in there to make their hair with cash and as a result of that some of them have started eating their capitals, so it is a major negative effect on MSMEs,’’ Yerima said.
He said that the policy wouldn’t have been introduced particularly when the cost of power is high.
“We have high cost and shortage of fuel, so energy is a major challenge and the cost of diesel is very high and it is what we use for transportation and generator.
“More so, there is high cost of electricity and we now have liquidity issue that is a constraint in the system and they gave a very short time to take money back.
“In the rural areas, they don’t have banks and where there are banks they don’t have smart phones and where they have smart phones you have poor network,’’ he said.
Yerima urged the network operators to scale up their operations to accommodate the increasing traffic on their bandwidth and allow electronic business transactions.
According to him, the network operators are battling with high cost of operations they don’t have enough bandwidth to accommodate the multiple online transactions.
“We encourage the network operators to improve their services and let the banks continue with weekend banking, this will assist in alleviating some of the challenges that are being faced.
“Government can find a way of making smart phones available to SMEs by providing grants for smart phones to enable MSMEs to operate during this period of cashless policy,” Yerima said.
He also said that the association had urged its members to embark on trade by barter to survive the situation.
“We are encouraging people to start trade by barter, if you need garri and you have rice you give someone rice and he gives you garri.
“And we also encourage trade by batter in their inputs in their factories and in their businesses at least for the time being and we pray in the near future the whole thing will normalise,’’ Yerima said.
