The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, on Tuesday, said Bureau de Change Operators in the country are greedy and make abnormal profit from forex sales.
Emefiele also announced the discontinuation of forex sales and new licence approval after the Monetary Policy Committee two-day meeting in Abuja.
According to him, BDC operators in the country continue to abuse the privilege, hence, the need to terminate it.
Emefiele said, “Operators in the BDC have not reciprocated the gesture to help maintain price stability in the market since the CBN had been selling forex to them.
“They have remained renegade and so greedy, recalcitrant with abnormally high profit from these sales while ordinary Nigerians have been left to feel the pain and therefore suffer.
“Given this rent seeking behaviour, it is not surprising that since the CBN began to sell forex to the BDCs, the number of operators has risen from mere 74 in 2005 to over 2,700 in 2016, and almost 5,500 BDCs as at today.
“In addition, the CBN constantly receives nothing less than 500 new applications from BDC licences every month, and we therefore begin to wonder, what is in this business that everybody must be in it?”
The CBN governor said commercial banks would be monitored to provide forex for the legitimate use of Nigerians.
“The Central Bank will henceforth discontinue the sale of forex to Bureau de Change operators,” he added.
The CBN had been supplying each licensed BDCs $20,000 per week at the rate of N393 with the instruction that they should sell with a margin of N2 but some of them sell as high as N505, making over N100 on every dollar sold.
PUNCH
