Foreign exchange customers and the general public should only utilize CBN-licensed bureaux de changes (BDCs) to receive dollars at the permitted rate, according to the Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON).
ABCON president Alhaji Aminu Gwadabe said in a statement issued over the weekend that only CBN-licensed BDCs follow regulatory requirements for selling dollars at allowed rates.
Gwadabe encouraged members of the public to always do business with CBN-licensed BDCs that follow all regulations and follow worldwide best practices.
He claimed that parallel market operations have been important drivers of exchange rates for years, and that maintaining control over such transactions has grown difficult.
Forex speculators are taking advantage of the current status of the foreign currency market and the naira to sell dollars above the CBN’s authorized margin, he said.
Gwadabe insisted that BDCs licensed by the CBN are not selling dollars to end users at a rate higher than the N2 per dollar margin set by the financial sector regulator to shield the naira from foreign exchange speculators and maintain exchange rate stability.
According to the ABCON executive council, the CBN-licensed BDCs bought dollars at N393 to a dollar and sold at N494 to a dollar, resulting in a N101 margin.
As a result, the ABCON executive council has brought the false information to the attention of the Nigerian Press Council, demanding it to bring those guilty to justice.
The ABCON Executive Council stated that while its members strictly adhere to the CBN regulation requirement of a predefined weekly transaction margin, it has been unable to ascertain what led to the newspaper’s false allegation of a fictitious selling margin.
According to the ABCON Executive Council, ABCON has continued to guarantee that BDCs file their reports on time. Know Your Customer (KYC) and due diligence reports are also performed by BDCs.
While BDCs are licensed to offer retail, over-the-counter foreign exchange transactions, it is stated that they play important roles in the economy and have contributed to the country’s economic development by ensuring order and confidence in the forex market, providing data for monetary policy, providing channels for CBN intervention in the retail forex market, and creating over 15,000 jobs, among other things.