Apex bank makes $10K special midweek sales to 2991 BDCs

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in its bid to sustain foreign exchange liquidity said it would make a special intervention forex sales of 10,000 dollars to each of the 2991 licensed Bureau de Change (BDC) on Thursday.

The Acting Director, Corporate Communications, CBN, Mr Isaac Okorafor said this in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja.

According to him, the aim of the special intervention is to meet the upsurge of forex requests of low-end customers, which has been on the sudden increase in the past few days.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the CBN had last week increased forex sales to BDCs from 8,000 dollars once a week, to 10, 000 dollars twice a week, amounting to 20, 000 dollars weekly per BDC.

However, the CBN later changed its plans and decided to instead sell only 10,000 dollars once a week, which it did on Tuesday in order to reduce logistical difficulties.

The BDC operators had expressed disappointment over the reversal.

They said that 10,000 dollars a week was insufficient to meet forex demand at that segment, thus CBN plans to have a converged inter-Bank, BDC and parallel market rate may not be achieved.