30,000 Bureau de Change Workers to Lose Their Jobs Before March

No fewer than 30,000 bureaux de change (BDC) workers would be sacked within the first quarter of this year, out of about 200,000 workers are engaged in the sector.

The President, Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON), Alhaji Aminu Gwadabe, who made this known yesterday, said the planned downsizing followed the continued loss of business by operators after the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) stoppage of  weekly dollar sales to body.

The ABCON boss listed those to be affected as directors, auditors, operations managers and compliance officers, as well as chief executives.

The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele had announced  a new foreign exchange policy which included the stoppage of weekly dollar sales to BDCs.  He ordered the apex bank to henceforth discontinue sales of foreign exchange to BDCs.

“Operators in this segment of the market would now need to source their foreign exchange from autonomous sources. They must however, note that the CBN would deploy more resources to monitoring these sources to ensure that no operator is in violation of our anti-money laundering laws,” Emefiele said.

But Gwadabe said: “As law abiding citizens and partners in progress with the CBN, we respect the decision of the apex bank as the regulator of the banking industry and foreign exchange market where we operate. While we are not totally surprised by the decision, we, however, believe there are better ways of addressing the challenges in the foreign exchange market.”

He further said, BDC’s are not the problem of Nigeria as said by the CBN, but rather are solutions to the deep rooted problems of the economy, saying that the new CBN law will increase the devaluation of Naira.