By Ifeanyi Onuba

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, on Wednesday, said the various reforms carried out by the apex bank had led to a decline of about 90 per cent in fraud committed through the use of Automated Teller Machine.

Sanusi said this in Abuja while declaring open a three-day workshop on the execution of the Financial System Strategy 2020.

The FSS 2020 strategy is aimed at transforming the country’s financial services industry into a catalyst for growth.

It is also geared towards developing the country into an international financial centre as well as making it Africa’s financial hub by creating a domestic financial system that can sustain the country by 2020.

Speaking at the event, Sanusi said stakeholders in the financial sector had, in 2006, collectively agreed to pursue a financial reform programme that would be holistic, internally consistent and in harmony across the board.

The move, he noted, was informed by unpleasant results recorded by the various sectors of the financial system in their individual efforts at reforming the system.

Since the commencement of that reform, he said that the number of frauds committed in the banking sector through the use of ATMs had reduced drastically.

He said, “This may not be the appropriate forum to sing the success stories of the FSS 2020 initiative, but suffice it to say that it is arguably the most comprehensive financial reform programme going on in the world today.

“The various sectors of the economy have shown tremendous improvement, in spite of the adverse impact of the global financial crisis that has been on since late 2008.”

Sanusi said, “In payments, I must state that we are confident that Nigeria will have a modern payment system comparable to what obtains in other developed economies. We will have a full commercial centre that will have a full range of payment, including Point of Sales, ATMs, telephones and Internet without the historical problems associated with power availability.

“We have also drastically reduced the level of electronic fraud in the system over the last two years and our statistics show a drop of over 90 per cent in ATM fraud.”

He further explained that the dramatic drop in the levels of non-performing loans as well as the structured growth of banks in the areas of market capitalisation, capital adequacy ratio and liquidity ratio had restored confidence in the economy.

“The banks are on the road to recovery and I have no doubt that we have put in place the relevant measures to grow the banking sector along the lines of international best practices,” he added.

Sanusi said the yield curve in the financial markets had deepened, adding that the level of transparency and efficiency in the markets had risen dramatically as serious investors had started returning to the Nigerian financial markets.

Source: Punch