Banks Clear N895bn Cheques, Others
Banking
By Ayodele Aminu
The Nigeria Automated Clearing System (NACS) processed a total of 1,044,967 cheques and financial instruments valued at N895 billion between April and May this year.
This was contained in the report presented at the 273rd edition of the Bankers' Committee yesterday in Abuja by the Managing/Chief Executive of Nigeria Inter-bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS), an arm of NACS, Mr. Paul Lawal.
The NIBSS boss who presented a progress report on NACS, also put the daily average cleared items and value at 25,000 and N22 billion respectively.
The Bankers' Committee is an association of the chief executives of banks and selected financial institutions, which meets bi-monthly to discuss the state of affairs in the industry. The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) usually chairs the meeting.
Lawal noted that three banks joined the clearing house in April and May, 2004, bringing the number active participants in the automated clearing system operations to 75 as at end of May 2004.
He also put the volume and value of instruments processed through its new credit transfer system - NIBSS Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) within the last two months at 460 and N117 million respectively.
A public campaign for NEFT he added, would soon be launched to increase its awareness among the banking public, individuals and corporates.
While imploring banks to also publicise the NEFT service, he advised that they provide materials for processing the NEFT instrument at branches, and train relevant staff. "This way, bank customers would receive good service as they respond to our publicity programmes," he stated.
To enable treasurers move funds with the new clearing settlement process Lawal disclosed that "NIBSS has reviewed closing time for inter-bank operations to 3.30 p.m. on Mondays and 3.00 p.m for Tuesday to Friday."
It would be recalled that the apex bank in its Annual Reports for the year 2003 had revealed that cheques totaling 12,526,643 amounting to N8,928.5 billion passed through the clearing house in 2003.
"Following improvements in the payment system's infrastructure, banking habits as well as public confidence, the report explained, resulted in a 12.2 and 125.3 per cent increases respectively in both the volume and value of cheques that passed the clearing house in 2003. Both the volume and value were put at N12,526,643 and N8,928.5 billion respectively.
"Similarly, the volume of cheques cleared through the Lagos Clearing House (LCH) rose by 1.0 per cent over the level in 2002 to 6,679,654, while the value rose substantially by 271.2 per cent to N5,132.8 billion.
"The volume and value of cheques cleared through the Lagos Clearing House represented 53.2 and 57.5 per cent respectively of the total volume and value of cheques cleared in the system," the apex bank had disclosed
Just few months ago, the CBN through the MICR Technical Implementation Committee had expressed concern over the high rejection rates of cheques at the NACS at 271 edition of the Bankers' Committee meeting.
"High reject rates due to encoding violations had continued to be recorded on a high scale. The use of poor quality paper with inferior consumables, poor alignments, lack of trained operators, poor technical support and poor storage facilities were identified as some of the reasons for the reject.
"It was observed that some banks still engaged in wrong application of sort-codes on drafts, and drafts, and frequent transfer of their trained MICR operators," the Committee, had stated after conducted its implementation monitoring visits.
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