A total of 12.922 million cheques worth Dh643.7 billion ($175 billion) were handled by the UAE Clearing Cheque System during the first five months of 2017, according to the UAE Central Bank data.

A total of Dh28.9 billion worth of 546,000 cheques were bounced from January through the end of May, accounting for 4.5 per cent of the cheques' total value, and 4.2 per cent of the total number of cheques handled by the electronic image-based cheque clearing system during the first five months of the year, reported WAM, the Emirates official news agency.

As per the statistics, the total value of dishonoured cheques during the first five months of 2017 fell by 7.3 per cent, Dh2.3 billion, against the same period last year during which the total value hit around Dh31.22 billion.

On the monthly level, the total amount of cheques dishonoured through the UAE Clearing System declined 4.1 per cent worth Dh5.46 billion during the month of May - through which cheques worth Dh133.4 billion were handled by the clearing system- against Dh5.7 billion of cheques in April, during which the system cleared a total of Dh127.4 billion worth of cheques.

The total number of dishonoured cheques during the month of May declined to 107.7 thousands from 108,000 in April, accounting for 4 per cent of the total cheques cleared by the system in April, against 4.2 per cent in April.