More bounced cheques in Oman last year: Central bank report

Muscat: The number of cheques that bounced in 2016 in Oman reached 373,082 last year, up from 282,209 in 2015, representing a 32 per cent increase, a Central Bank of Oman report has revealed.
The total number of cheques, which were subject to the cheque clearing process in 2016, increased by 8.81 per cent compared to last year amounting to 4.44 million cheques.
According to CBO, insufficient funds continue to lead the list of reasons of bounced cheques (74.88 per cent), followed by account closed or "legally blocked" account (9.79 per cent), and then MICR Encoding errors (4.05 per cent).
In addition to that, as a percentage of total cheques, bounced cheques witnessed an increase from 6.91 per cent in 2015 to 8.40 per cent in 2016.