The number of cheques that passed through the UAE’s cheque clearing system reached 12.060 million during the first five months of 2018, with a total value of around Dh592 billion($161.2 billion), a media report said.

The value of the cheques that were circulated from January to the end of May, represented around 39.3 percent of the total value of the cheques circulated in 2017, which reached Dh1.5 trillion, reported Emirates news agency Wam, citing to statistics published by the Central Bank of the UAE.

The Central Bank’s statistics showed that in the first five months of the year, the total number of bounced cheques reached 515,000, with an approximate value of Dh26.2 billion not exceeding 4.3 percent of the total value of the cleared cheques at the end of last May.