The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said Nigerian banks closed 234 branches and 649 automated teller machines (ATMs) in 2020 amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Bretton Woods institution which said this in its 2021 Financial Access Survey (FAS) released on Monday, noted that the number of ATM points in Nigeria fell by 649 to 18,810 in 2020 from 19,459 in 2019.
According to the report, the number of commercial bank branches in Nigeria reduced by 234 to 5,158 in 2020 from 5,392 in 2019.
The survey showed that the number of borrowers from commercial banks decreased to 29.61 per 1,000 adults in 2020 from 25.42 per 1,000 adults in 2019.
According it, outstanding deposits with commercial banks per percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) rose to 20.50 in 2020 against 16.31 in 2019, while outstanding loans from the deposit money banks increased to 12.93 percentage of GDP in 2020 from 11.80 in 2019.
The IMF further noted that the 2021 round of the Financial Access Survey (FAS) takes place in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, collecting data on access to and use of financial services amid the crisis.
It said the 2021 FAS round offers a glimpse of what has happened during the pandemic on the financial access front
