CBK misses target in demonetization exercise
By Fred Aminga, October 2, 2019
Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) was unable to mop up Sh7.4 billion during the just demonetization exercise having accounted for 209,661,000 pieces out of the possible 217 million old Sh1000 notes.
The lender of last resort said it could not account for the whereabouts of 7,386,000 pieces which was not on the radar of the financial system after 40 days of the process.
Speaking yesterday about the process CBK governor Dr. Patrick Njoroge said by the end of September he received 209,661,000.
He said that analysis of the demonetisation process which ended Monday revealed that 99 per cent of transactions during that period were worth less than Sh1 million each.
During that period 3,172 transactions were flagged down as suspicious.
“We need to connect the dots, and we can deal with this at the appropriate time,” he said.
A total of 161 million transactions took place out of which CBK took necessary action through targeted inspection.
“We as Central Bank, when we saw through our monitoring, we didn’t wait but went in and did targeted inspection. We did 15 during this period,” Dr. Njoroge said.
The banks, forex bureaus, micro-finance institutions and all deposit taking institutions witnessed heightened tightening of due diligence.