The Central Bank of Nigeria has suspended the sale of foreign exchange to bureaux de change as it insist it will no longer renewing licences of BDCs.
CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, who made this known shortly after the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja, said BDCs deliberately sabotage the nation’s economy by misusing the weekly $20,000 allocated to them.
The Governor also took out time to tongue lash international agencies and embassies operating in Nigeria of sabotaging the economy by illegally patronising BDCs.
“We will deal with them ruthlessly and we will report the international bodies,” he said.
The apex bank’s governor pointed out that, international development finance institutions, embassies and others are supposed to patronise the importer and exporter window, where there is transparency not BDCs.
Mr. Emefiele who was physically angry threatened that CBN will deal ruthlessly with banks allowing illegal forex dealers to use their platforms as well as report the defaulting international organisations to their regulators.
The Governor who further noted that previous allocation of foreign exchange to BDCs will be given to banks to sell to customers fingered BDCs as major culprits of dollarisation of the Nigerian economy.
Some other allegations against BDCs by the him was that the operators have become an avalanche of rent seekers while owners have multiple BDCs and financing unauthorised transactions.
He however, directed banks to “immediately” and transparently sell forex to customers who present the required documents.
“All banks are to immeidtaely create dedicated tellers for the same purpose” He said.
