SOUTH SUDAN: Central Bank on cashless society drive

The Central Bank of South Sudan is taking measures to move towards a cashless society, Governor James Alic Garang has said.

Addressing a press conference on Tuesday afternoon at the Central Bank headquarters in Juba, Garang said they intend to discourage South Sudanese from moving around with large amounts of cash.

“The maximum limit for cash withdrawal across all channels by public institutions, government agencies, corporates, and individuals is SSP10 million. The public is urged to join the banking system by opening accounts to facilitate their receipts and payments or promote digitalization of the financial services,” he said.

The Governor urged the commercial banks to make the account opening seamless, especially for those traditionally excluded and encouraged the South Sudanese to embrace electronic payment platforms, including mobile money, credit and debit cards.

He said the electronic platforms offered convenience and established individual credit history at friendly rates.

Garang also urged the commercial banks and mobile money operators to collaborate to ensure interoperability or modalities that allow customers to move funds seamlessly. 

However, Juba economic analyst Dr Abraham Maliet Mamer urged the Central Bank to first establish the economic players, with money and educate them.

“Our economy is 80 percent informal and therefore doing digital banking will not change anything because of the small number of people who have embraced it. You need to educate the people first, so that they understand mobile banking and also reform the banking sector,” Mamer said.  

Mamer noted that the 10 million SSP maximum cash withdrawal would not have any impact in the economy as most of the SSP in circulation was outside the banking system.

He said that the best way for the Central Bank to mop up the excess cash was to introduce new currency.

“When you change the currency, you direct that all money be put back into the banking system, then you can do what we call limitation and the policy will succeed,” he said.

Former Vice-Chancellor of the Dr John Garang University of Science and Technology Prof Abraham Matoch, welcomed the move towards a cashless society, saying it will improve the telecommunication infrastructure.  

“This has been delayed for no reason and it is important to speed it up to help the Ministry of Telecommunication and other institutions concerned to increase connectivity. There should be no part of the country left behind as telecommunication is important to everybody,” Prof Matoch said.

MTN South Sudan Fintech CEO Francis Matseketsa also welcomed the Central Bank move, saying it will make their work easy.

“This is the greatest news of all time for South Sudan, we have been finding it difficult to access the market, particularly the consumers, and the merchants to adopt digital payments and now that the government and monetary authorities have taken this move, it makes our job easier,” he said

“We are super excited to run with this work to ensure that we digitalize payments. We have the tools, we have the distribution, we have got the weaponry to make sure that the millions of customers that are holding phones, use mobile money wallet accounts and we accept a wide variety,” he stressed.

SOURCE: RADIOTAMAZUJ