• Offers $41m To BDCs For BTA, PTA, Medical, School Fees
In line with its resolve to saturate the country’s foreign exchange market and frustrate the activities of currency speculators, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday announced the opening of a new special foreign exchange window that would enable Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) import eligible finished and semi-finished items not exceeding $20,000 quarterly for each enterprise.
A Monday, April 10 statement by Isaac Okorafor, the CBN’s acting Director of Corporate Communications, noted that the special intervention of $100m to authorized dealers at the forex auction in the interbank wholesale window was necessitated by a discovery that a large number of SMEs were being crowded out of the forex space by large firms.
Okoroafor further disclosed that the CBN had begun the massive sale of foreign exchange in different sectors of the Forex market this week, beginning on Monday, April 10, 2017.
“The sum of $20,000 per SME customer per quarter can be effected by telegraphic transfer subject to completion of Form ‘M,’ supported with pro forma Invoice and the importer’s Bank Verification Number (BVN),” he explained.
Consequently, the statement urged all processing banks to ensure that their importer-clients submit relevant shipping documents not later than 60 days from the date of the transfer.
The apex bank on its website defines Small and Medium Scale Enterprises as those with asset base (excluding land) of between N5m and N500m and a workforce of between 11 and 300.
It also sold $41m for BTA, PTA, medical and tuition fees, while BDCs got $10,000 each to meet the needs of low-end users in the country.
Okoroafor said the dealers in the wholesale segment will have value for their respective bids on Tuesday, April 11, 2017.
He recalled that the sum of $99,544,417.45 was picked up by dealers out of the $100 million offered by the CBN during the last wholesale auction on April 6, 2017.
Meanwhile, operators in the Bureau De Change (BDC) segment have duly funded their accounts with the CBN in anticipation of picking up the dollar equivalent ($10,000) on Tuesday, April 11, 2017. Feelers also indicated that the CBN may continue its special intervention in the market with the sale of more US Dollars to BDCs and in both the retail and wholesale windows in the course of the week.
