CBN, Banks Move To Blacklist Fraudsters
In the battle against fraud, the Central Bank of Nigeria will begin to compile the list of fraudsters to blacklist them from the banking industry even as it said the country try will be out of recession and start recording growth by the end of the second quarter of the year.
Rising from the Bankers Committee meeting in Lagos yesterday, the apex bank and banking sector operators and other regulators said there will be a database asides that of credit defaulters which will gather the details of fraudsters.
Managing Director and Chief Executive of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe speaking during a briefing said the committee deliberated on “topical issues that had to do with fraud and one of that is the electronic and card fraud and part of the deliberation was that there is need to create a central depository which is a database of suspected fraud through the system.
“Once that database is set up and there is suspected fraud going through the system we can have ways of ensuring there is strong detergent for people who are known as fraudsters in the system.
“Hopefully if that is implemented what you will see is that the level of fraud which is coming through SMS and bank cards will decease significantly. Very strict measures will be implemented to make sure that people don’t do it and repeat offenders are taken out of the banking system to make sure that we sanitize the system” he stated.
The CBN Director, Banking Supervision, Ahmed Abdulahi on his part assured that the economy will be out of recession by the second quarter of the year and start recording positive growth. According to him, the recent policies of the CBN particularly in the foreign exchange market has contributed immensely to the restoration of the nation’s economic fortune.
“The recent development in the forex market has led to prices turning downwards and convergence of rates and the positive effect of that on the economy, we have seen inflation trending downwards” he said.
Also, the CBN Director, Corporate Communication, Issac Okoroafor noted that “what drove the economy to a recession firstly is the very acute foreign exchange crunch that limited production. Secondly the fact that oil could not flow due militancy in the Niger Delta and of course the price of oil fell drastically.
“Now stability has been restored in the Niger delta and we have every hope it would continue that way. We also have significantly eased the problems of manufacturers and SMEs in the forex market. There is greater supply now and we have been able to ease off these fraudulent demand for foreign exchange.
“More importantly, Agric production has greatly improved which is impacting on food prices because they have been encouraged greatly by CBN anchor borrower program. So the collective actions of all these actions no doubt point to a direction to growth and you can see inflation has come down.
Meanwhile the banks say they are committed to ensuring availability of foreign exchange and funding for small businesses as part of efforts at restoring the economy. Managing Director of Rand Merchant Bank, Micheal Larbie noted that the “banking community is committed to further ensuring forex is available for all legitimate personal and business travel. The banks now are committed to having travel desk and cubicles in most of their branches and appropriate exchange rate will be duly published so that anyone that walks in.”
