The current trend of economic hardship occasioned by the scarcity of the redesigned naira notes could further worsen as hopes of customers getting respite from banks remained remote as at yesterday.
This is coming as customers, businessmen and entrepreneurs continued to lament the sustained scarcity of naira notes Monday.
Commenting on the development, Fiscal policy partner Africa tax leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Taiwo Oyedele, described it as a confusing and chaotic one for Nigerians.
According to Oyedele, the implementation has not met the desired result. “I just think or feel we should have done things in a planned manner. We have not matured to this level of confusion and I must state that there is no harm in redesigning the currency or even trying to adopt digital payment or cashless economy as this has been done by different countries with Nigeria not an exception.
“I just think this situation should be a reference point globally for the right reasons and with what we are doing now, people will refer to Nigeria as a “bad case study” of how not to redesign a currency, that is certainly not a good thing or good place you want to be in history but unfortunately, this is actually playing out.”
When asked for solutions, Oyedele said the CBN should go back to re-strategizing and tap into data to solve the problem.
“The CBN should tap into data to solve this scarcity. They can also partner key stakeholders and involve relevant agencies of government and especially the tax system as tax is primarily objective and anti-graft agencies, infrastructure providers and get to know how much time they need to get this problem done,” she said.