The Central Bank of Nigeria has announced that it will cease selling foreign exchange to banks by the end of the year.
CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele made these remarks during a press conference held following the Banker’s Committee meeting on Thursday in Abuja to unveil the bank’s new forex repatriation scheme, RT200.
“The era is coming to an end when, because your customers need 100million dollars in foreign exchange or 200 million dollars, you now want to pack all the dollars and pass it to CBN to give you dollars.
He said that banks will be instructed to produce their own export revenues rather than going to the Central Bank for foreign exchange.
“When those export proceeds come, we will fund them at 5% for you and they will earn rebait. Then you can sell those proceeds to your customers that want 100 million dollars. But to say you will continue to come to the Central Bank to give you dollars, we will stop it,” the CBN boss said.
The move, according to Emefiele, is in keeping with the CBN’s new goal to increase the country’s foreign reserves from non-oil export revenues.
“Nigeria cannot continue to depend on FX earnings to fund its import obligations from revenue coming from earnings from products where we cannot determine both price and quantity,” he also said.
