Banks Groan as CBN Seizes over N7Trillionn of Deposits

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has removed a whopping N7.02 trillion of customer deposits from banks’ accounts and kept it in its vault.

Banks use the money in deposit accounts to make loans to other people or businesses.

In return, the bank receives interest payments on those loans from borrowers.

The banks include Access Bank Plc, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank), United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, FCMB Group and Sterling Bank Plc.

The others are Union Bank of Nigeria Plc, Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, Fidelity Bank Plc, and Zenith Bank Plc.

Breakdown of how much was removed from banks accounts by CBN:

Access Bank- N1.47trillion

Zenith Bank – N1.25trillion

GTBank – N953 billion

UBA- N915.15billion

Union Bank – N454.8billion

Stanbic IBTC- N423.18billion

Fidelity Bank – N686.1billion

Wema Bank – N313.8billion

FCMB Group – N309.63billion

Sterling Bank – N243.87billion

The CBN traditionally mops up funds form the system in a period of inflation, but the Nigerian economy has been on a downward swing and in dire need of injection of funds.

And this makes the contractionary policy from the apex bank more puzzling.