The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will announce a new foreign exchange rate for licensed Bureaux de Change operators (BDCs) on Monday.
Giving this hint at the weekend was Isaac Okorafor, the Acting Director, Corporate Communications of the CBN.
Speaking in an interview with The Nation, Okorafor who confirmed this development however kept the new rate under wraps.
“I don’t know the new rates yet but it would certainly be announced by Monday. That is the much I can say for now,” he said.
The CBN spokesman had in a statement issued earlier said the apex bank hopes to commence sale of forex twice weekly to Bureaux de Change operators (BDCs) from Monday, said it was part of efforts to sustain liquidity in the foreign exchange market.
Specifically, he said: “Licensed BDC operators are therefore required to fund their accounts with the CBN on Mondays and Wednesdays, while they receive their purchases on Tuesdays and Thursdays respectively.”
Expatiating, he said: “The sale amount to BDCs is hereby increased to $10,000 weekly ($5,000 per bid).”
The CBN had initially fixed N360 to a dollar, as the rate at which BDCs will be allowed to purchase greenbacks from International Money Transfer Organisations (IMTOs) and subsequently fixed the rate at which BDCs will sell dollars to end users at not more than N362/$1.
Before the development, the country’s over 3,000 licensed BDCs were buying dollars from IMTOs under the supervision of the CBN at a rate of N381 to the dollar and selling at N399/$.
The regulator had last Monday directed Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) to sell foreign exchange sourced from it to retail end-users at not more than N360/$1 for Personal/ Business Travel Allowance (PTA/BTA) and other invisibles even as it offered a fresh $100million in forwards.
The CBN’s almost daily dollar sales have crashed dollar rates at the parallel market to about N375/$ and N365/$ in Lagos and Abuja respectively.