FOREX: CBN To Monitor Compliance Of Blanks

At the backdrop of fears that banks may not be above board in the new foreign exchange market regime, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said it would monitor the banks to ensure strict compliance with its directive to sell foreign exchange to customers, for invisibles such as Business Travel Allowance, Personal Travel Allowance, medical and tuition.

According to the apex bank, the monitoring exercise was to ensure that no one with legitimate request was denied forex.

CBN’s Acting Director in charge of Corporate Communications, Osita Nwanisobi, disclosed that the CBN had put in place monitoring mechanism to guarantee the seamless sale of foreign exchange to customers who supported their requests with relevant documentation.

He said the CBN had also extracted the commitment of the banks, through their Chief Executive Officers, that customers with legitimate requests would not be turned back.

Meanwhile, Nwanisobi dismissed insinuations in some quarters that the CBN planned to convert the foreign exchange in the domiciliary accounts of customers into Naira in order to check purported shortage of availability of the United States dollars.

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Nwanisobi, while disclosing that the CBN never planned to tamper with the foreign exchange deposits in the accounts of customers, insisted that those making such allegations were criminal speculators whose intention was to create panic in the foreign exchange market.

According to him, at no time did the CBN ever suggest or imply that it would tinker with the foreign exchange deposits of customers.

He therefore urged operators of domiciliary accounts and other members of the banking public to go about their legitimate foreign exchange transactions and disregard fictitious stories aimed at pitching them against the Bank and triggering chaos in the system.

The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele at his post Monetary Policy meeting (MPC) briefing, last week, disclosed that the CBN would stop the weekly sale of foreign exchange to Bueaux de Change (BDCs) and that deposit money banks would henceforth sell to customers to meet their foreign exchange needs.

Sequel to the instruction, Banks Chief Executives met at the weekend and affirmed their readiness to meet the foreign exchange demands from genuine Foreign Exchange (FX) end-users as directed by the apex bank.