Bureaux de Change, BDCs operators over the weekend rejected Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN’s directive that operators make at least three dollar purchases weekly or be sanctioned.
The apex had also threatened to punish banks that fail to sell foreign exchange to eligible travelers and boost dollar liquidity in the market.
The new CBN’s moves followed last week’s crash of the naira against dollar, which saw the local currency closing at N366/$1 at the parallel market on Friday from N361/$1 sustained in nearly one year.
The local currency remained flat at the parallel market trading at N364/$1 for the first three trading sessions in last week before losing one naira on Thursday and Friday respectively to close the week at N366/$1 despite $310 million injected into the interbank foreign exchange market by the CBN.
Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) has however rejected CBN’s mandatory dollar purchase order to BDCs. The group rather, asked the regulator to review BDC’s dollar purchasing rate to align with rate commercial banks’ buying rate.
ABCON President, Aminu Gwadabe, said in a statement that CBN’s directive on BDCs should be put on hold. He said: “The CBN’s directive at this time of our operational difficulties is no doubt precarious and vague and was intended to emasculate a sector that has helped the system to stabilize and thus unacceptable”.
The CBN had directed in a statement signed by its Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, that: “All BDCs shall henceforth access forex from the CBN on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It is compulsory that all BDCs access forex at least three times weekly. Any BDC that fails to access the forex window at least three times weekly shall have its licence reviewed by the CBN”.
The CBN’s goal, Okorafor said, is to ensure that eligible travelers are able to access foreign exchange for the Business Travel Allowances (BTA), Personal Travel Allowances (PTA), school fees payment and medical bills payment. It is also in line with its plan to deepen foreign exchange liquidity available in the market.
Finding by The Nation also showed that CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele and key CBN officials are expected to within this week, go on spot-checks in some unspecified branches of commercial banks to monitor compliance with directive on immediate dollar sale to travelers.
Gwadabe insisted that the regulator should firstly, merge BDC dollar buying rate with that of commercial banks and also pay ABCON disbursement fees as it is practiced globally. For instance, Travelex also collects forex disbursement fees from the CBN.
BDC operators insisted that making Fridays a market day for dollar purchase and funding done same day will be difficult to achieve and therefore should be discouraged. Gwadabe assured the CBN of BDCs’ continuous support in enabling the regulator achieve its core mandate of ensuring exchange rate stability and liquidity access.
