The Nigerian government is taking measures to save the Country’s currency from further nosediving against the U.S dollar as Nigerians lament on the hardship created by the current exchange rate, which is N175 to $1.
Governor of the Central Bank Of Nigeria, Mr. Chukwuma Soludo said: “We’ll supply whatever is necessary to get the economy on an even keel. If the market is going to absorb between US$100 million and US$200 million between now and next week, we’ll supply.”
To narrow the gap between the official and black market exchange rates, the government has also vowed to increase the supply of dollars to the Bureau De Change operators by as much as US$200 million every week. The federal government has vowed to impose heavy sanctions, such as blacklisting, on banks and their personnel found to be involved in practices geared towards the de-marketing of their competitors.
The central bank governor has assured Nigerians that the CBN and other regulators will continue to utilize every necessary arsenal to ensure that the banks continue to be protected. “But any bank whose staff is caught de-marketing would both be sacked and blacklisted from working in any other bank in Nigeria,” he warned.
As part of the measures to check the trend of de-marketing, the central bank governor said that CBN would soon make public, the telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of banks’ chief executives as well as that of his own through, which the banking and general public could report cases of de-marketing.
And in a bid to stop funds flowing to the black market, Apex Bank has raised the minimum capital requirement for bureaus to access foreign exchange auctions from N10 million to N500 million. To ensure that the new policy achieves the desired result, the Central Bank would only sell the dollars to Banks and class ‘A’ Bureau De Change.
