President Muhammadu Buhari has said Nigeria’s new digital currency, eNaira, will increase the country’s Gross Domestic Product by $29 billion over the next 10 years.
The President said this on Monday at the unveiling of eNaira at the State House.
According to the President, the launch of eNaira makes Nigeria the first country in Africa and one of the first few countries globally to introduce a digital currency.
The new payment system, which took the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) four years to roll out, is expected to drive financial inclusion, serve as a backbone for electronic payment in Nigeria and also enable the movement of more people from the informal to the formal sector, hence scaling up the tax base of the country.
President Buhari also expects it to enable the government send direct payments to citizens eligible for specific welfare programmes as well as foster cross-border trade, a statement signed by presidential spokesperson Femi Adesina said.
”Let me note that aside from the global trend to create Digital Currencies, we believe that there are Nigeria-specific benefits that cut across different sectors of, and concerns of the economy,” the President noted.
”The use of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) can help move many more people and businesses from the informal into the formal sector, thereby increasing the tax base of the country.”
The President also commended the Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, his deputies and the entire team of staff who worked tirelessly to make the launch of Africa’s first digital currency a reality.
”Work intensified over the past several months with several brainstorming exercises, deployment of technical partners and advisers, collaboration with the Ministries of Communication and Digital Economy and its sister agencies like the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), integration of banking software across the country and painstaking tests to ensure the robustness, safety and scalability of the CBDC System, ” he said.
