November 24, 2015/The Will
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) weekend disclosed that it had saved a whopping $300m in the last three weeks from Bureau De Change (BDC) in the country through the condition that request for forex must be accompanied by the Bank Verification Number (BVN) of the customer.
CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, who disclosed this at the 49th Annual Bankers Dinner organised by the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) in Lagos, said the requirement of BVN for transactions has cut down the number of BDCs requesting for forex transaction resulting in the cutting down of foreign exchange requests by $100 million every week.
THEWILL recalled that CBN on Nov. 1, , directed all BDCs in the country to request and verify the BVN of their customers before any forex transaction is consummated. The directive also stated that details of the transactions be included in the BDCs report to the apex bank.
According to Emefiele, the weekly savings of $100 million has resulted in foreign exchange savings of $300 million for the past three weeks, even as he added that the policy had chased out fraudulent BDCs from the system.
His words: “We have seen the number of BDC operators who purchase forex from the Central bank every week drop from an average of about 2,886 to just below 1,200 BDCs, thereby giving the CBN forex savings of almost $100 million per week. This policy seems to have chased away unscrupulous BDC operators and allow only genuine operators to remain in the market.”
Emefiele noted that while “it may be too soon to completely adjudicate on the merits of our policies, preliminary signs indicates that we are headed to the right direction as a people.
The CBN governor added that through its various policies, the CBN has “managed to attain stability in the exchange rate at about N197/$1 since February 2015, although some are not happy with us for that action. “
He added: “Most speculators and rent-seekers have been eliminated from the forex market. Domestic production of excluded items such as tomato paste, rice, fish, aluminum items, and others are picking up gradually. Despite the sharp drop in inflows, our forex reserves are still at about $30 billion which is enough to cover about six months of Nigeria’s imports as against the traditional benchmark of three months.”
He however called for understanding of the current situation, saying “this is an opportunity for us to look inwards, diversify our economy away from oil, produce locally and create jobs for our unemployed youths.”
Emefiele said: “We definitely cannot survive as a people by importing everything and anything. We are a resilient and hardworking people and I am confident that out of these difficulties would come out the best ideas.
“I am assured that better days are around the corner and we just cannot lose faith. This is the time to display our resilience as a nation and we must all put our hands on the deck to ensure a better economy for Nigeria.”
