The Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability, Central Bank of Nigeria, Aisha Ahmad, has said the amount spent on maintaining the naira has increased by N10bn annually.

Ahmad, who revealed this on Friday during her appearance before the House of Representatives to defend CBN’s new cash withdrawal limits policy, attributed over 90 per cent of currency management costs to banknote production.

Findings by Sunday PUNCH indicate that the apex bank spends about N150bn on the management of the naira annually, which has now increased by N10bn, as declared by Ahmad in her presentation, obtained by one of our correspondents on Friday.

A former CBN deputy governor, Dr Kingsley Moghalu, had earlier disclosed that the apex bank spends about N150bn annually to maintain the naira.

He stated that the amount was used to produce, store, transport, protect and destroy the naira notes every year.

Going by Ahmad’s diclosure of N10bn increase, the apex bank has spent N800bn between 2017 and 2021 on the production, storage, transportation and destruction of the currency.