The Central Bank of Nigeria has debited fourteen banks led by Zenith Bank a total of N356.1bn for failure to meet Cash Reserve Requirement (CRR) requirement.

The debit is the first suffered by banks in the new year 2022.

The affected banks include; Zenith Bank (N170m debit), Providus (N40bn debit) and FCMB N39 billion.

Others were First Bank of Nigeria Limited N27bn, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc N20bn and Citibank N12 bn, according to ThisDay.

Union Bank of Nigeria Plc, Polaris Banks and Stanbic IBTC bank all suffered N10bn debit; Keystone Bank (N6bn), Ecobank Nigeria was debited N5bn, Sterling Bank Plc, N3.6bn, Fidelity Bank N2bn, while Nova merchant bank was debited N1.5 bn.

The bank believes that the adjustments would help curb monetary-induced inflation.

“The committee is confident that increasing the CRR at this time is fortuitous as it will help address monetary-induced inflation whilst retaining the benefits from the Bank’s LDR policy, which has been successful in significantly increasing credit to the private sector as well as pushing market interest rates downwards,” the Governor, CBN, Godwin Emefiele said at the end of January 2020, MPC.

The CRR policy empowers the CBN to debit 27.5 per cent of customer deposits from bank accounts which the banks cannot access.

Banks were debited a total of N8.3trn in 2020 when the rate was hiked to 27.5 per cent, according to reports.

Last year, the apex bank also debited defaulters N10trn in the first nine months.