By Francis Akinnodi

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Economic and commercial activities in Ondo State have slowed down due to the insufficient quantity of the newly-designed N1,000, N500 and N200 in circulation.

The Hope reports that customers are trooping into their various banks to deposit their old naira notes as the CBN yesterday extended the deadline to February 10, 2023.

The Hope who monitored the situation also reports that those going for withdrawal were not being paid with the new bills but rather with old notes which most customers reject.

Few banks, however, were disbursing N100, N50 to customers who are willing to accept them.

A customer at a new generation bank in Ondo, Adetutu Olaniyan said the bank had not paid her with the new bills since they were introduced last year.

Olaniyan said the bank was still paying her with old notes until early this week when the branch stopped paying.

“I have not been paid with the new note, they have been disbursing the old notes up to last Wednesday as if the deadline is a joke.

“Now, we cannot get the money we need for our transactions from the bank, though the ATMs are disbursing new notes but most times, they are out of service,” he said.

Another customer, Carolina Uche, said some banks had been paying with only N100, N50 notes which were not affected by the redesign.

Uche said that was responsible for the resurgence of N100, N50 which used to be scarce but regretted that customers could not draw much of them because of the bulkiness and security risk involved.

She wondered why the redesigned notes are still very scarce less than days to the expiration of the old notes.

According to him, “it is either the CBN is not serious or the commercial banks are sabotaging it, these new notes are sold in the open market, why can we not get them from banks.

The Hope further reports that the cost of Point of Sale (PoS) transactions has increased by between 100 per cent and 150 per cent as depositing or withdrawal of N10,000 which used to be N100 is now N200.

Customers that insisted to be paid with new bills would have to part with N400 for every N10,000.

PoS operator, Toyin said the increase was due to the scarcity of the new notes for which they must grease palms to get at the bank.

She expressed worry that most residents still had the old notes in their possession.He noted that over three million MSMEs have registered on the platform, whose database would enhance evidence-based planning for the development of the sub-sector.