Banks employed more contract staff in Q3 -NBS

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in a new report on the banking sector has revealed that more contract staff were employed in the sector.
In its selected Banking Sector Data: Sectorial Breakdown of Credit, ePayment Channels and Staff Strength in the third quarter of 2018, the Bureau noted that the number of contract staff rose to 44,484 from 43,955 in the second quarter.
This represented a 529 increase in the number of contract staff that was employed by banks.
It will be recalled that the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has repeatedly warned banks to reduce the employment of contract staff noting that many of the fraud related incident tin the sector was traceable to contract staff.   
Over all, total banking sector staff stood at 102,820 in the quarter under review from representing a 0.95 per cent quarter-on-quarter increase and 24.12 per cent year-on-year increase.
The statistics bureau revealed in the report that the total value of credit allocated by the bank stood at N15.59 trillion as at Q3 2018.
 
Oil & Gas led the sector with the highest credit allocation of N3.59 trillion representing 23 per cent of total credit followed by the manufacturing sectors which got a credit allocation of N2.15 trillion representing 13.79 per cent of total credit.
 
Also, the government, agriculture, education and mining and quarry got credit allocations of N1.40 trillion, N591.78 billion, N60.59 billion and N6.20 billion representing 8.99 per cent, 3.08 per cent, 0.39 per cent and 0.04 per cent at the period under review.
 
NBS noted that gross loans stood at N16,04 trillion in the period under review. A breakdown showed that loans (after specific provisions) was N14,01 trillion while non performing loans (NPLs) was N2,42 trillion representing 15.13 per cent, 17.33 per cent and 30.28 per cent increase respectively.
 
Dat from the report further revealed a N2 billion rise in inward remittances. According to the report, remittances in 2017 stood at N6.66 billion from N4.92 billion in 2016. However, it was not the same with outward remittance as it dropped sharply to N82 billion in 2017 compared to N185 billion in 2016.
 
Meanwhile, a total volume of 5,294,871,285 transactions valued at N340.15 trillion were recorded in Q3 2018.  
 
A breakdown showed that Automated Teller Machine (ATM) transactions dominated the volume of transactions recorded. 220,270,371 volume of ATM transactions valued at N1,593 billion were recorded in Q3 2018.