The Central Bank of Nigeria has stopped the sale of foreign exchange to Bureau De Change (BDC) operators, citing need to curb speculative attacks on the country’s currency.
Governor of CBN, Mr Godwin Emefiele,made this known in Abuja on Monday.
Emefiele, who spoke to journalists, the said the apex bank would monitor the trade operations of the BDCs to ensure they do not violate the Money Laundering Act
He said commercial banks have also been authorised to accept cash deposits of foreign exchange from their customers.
According to him, BDC operators that are not satisfied with the apex bank decision should return the operational license to the CBN and ask for the refund of their N35m deposit.
The central bank governor said Nigeria was the only country in the world where the CBN provides BDC operators with foreign exchange adding that with the continued depletion of the foreign reserves, such funding was no longer sustainable.
For instance, the governor said that between July 2014 and January this year, the country’ reserves had suffered great pressure from speculative attacks, round tripping and front loading activities by actors in the foreign exchange market.
This, he noted, had led to a decline in the reserves from $37.3bn in June 2014 to N28bn currently.
Emefiele lamented that owing to the speculative attack on the nation’s currency, the central bank’s monthly foreign earnings had fallen from as high as $3.2bn to as low as $1bn monthly.
He said while the CBN would no longer provide the BDCs with foreign exchange for their operations, the apex bank would deploy more resources to monitoring their sources of foreign exchange to ensure that no operator is in violation of the bank’s anti-money laundering laws.
He added that the decision was not a punitive measure, but one meant to ensure that the CBN was better placed to carry out its mandate in an effective and efficient manner, which guarantees preservation of its scarce resources.
