The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has notified Nigerian banks it would stop the sale of foreign exchange to them by the end of 2022. Its Governor Godwin Emefiele stated this at the end of the Bankers’ Committee Meeting in Abuja. Emefiele said it was high time the banks started sourcing for their forex by funding entrepreneurs with ideas
“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. “It is coming to an end before or by the end of this year. We will tell them don’t come to the Central Bank for foreign exchange again go and generate your export proceeds.
“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,” he said.
According to the CBN Governor, the decision was in line with the CBN’s new commitment to boost the country’s foreign reserves through proceeds from non-oil exports. “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 said.
