Nigerian minting company can’t print more notes for now — Emefiele

Emefiele made the disclosure on Friday when he briefed the emergency meeting of the National Council of State according to sources who attended the meeting.

Premium Times reports the source as saying, “On Friday, Mr Emefiele told the leaders that the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc (The Mint), suffers capacity constraints, resulting in the failure to print adequate new notes to replace the old N200, N500, and 1,000 notes.

“The Mint has run out of papers to print N500 and 1,000 notes. They have placed orders with a German firm and De La Rue of the UK (for papers) but they have been placed on a long waiting list, so their orders cannot be met now.

““The Mint had received CBN’s request to print 70 million copies of the new notes, totalling N126bn to be pumped into circulation by today (yesterday), The Mint doesn’t have the capacity.”

Meanwhile, Buhari was non-committal at the meeting and barely spoke, the source added. He left the meeting as the time for the Muslim’s Jummah prayer drew close and his deputy, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, took over.

Osinbajo said the president would take a decision on the matter.