Last updated on August 23rd, 2021 at 09:23 am
The pressure on the Nigerian naira continues Thursday, August 19, 2021, as it fell to N520 against the US dollar at the parallel market.
The naira started with N517/USD, after staying steady at 515/$ on August 18
It’s N410.11 at the CBN rate and it’s N411.75/USD at the Investors and Exporters’ window Wednesday night.
The strongest it has ever done since the July 27 CBN’s decision on BDC operators was N506 after plunging to 525/USD at the parallel market the second day the apex bank took the decision.
Since it bounced back a few days ago, it had been floating around 508/USD
Although the decision of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was hailed when it stated that it would no longer sell foreign currencies to Bureau De Change operators because of their sabotaging activities in the fx market, we did point out in our article that there would be consequences which may, however, be temporary.
The CBN had stated that it would channel the allocation of $20,000 for each of the over 5000 BDC operators to financial institutions.
The aim was to make FX available for Nigerians who need them for PTA, BTA, foreign medicals, and foreign school fees.
It subsequently directed the banks to set up forex teller points in their branches for easy access.
But it was pointed out that the bottleneck in the Nigerian banks might make access to forex challenging and time-consuming.
For instance, there is no provision for parents and guardians who might need forex to settle some financial exigencies of their kids abroad once the person had exceeded his quota for the period.
This means such people would still have to patronise the BDCs to meet their needs.
And since the apex bank’s decision, fx sellers on the streets had said they’re in business source forex as pointed out in one of our reports where we highlighted their sources of Dollars, Pounds, and Euro which is available at: https://infomediang.com/sources-of-forex-bdc-operators-nigeria
Would the Godwin Emefiele-led CBN overcome the challenges in the FX market for once?
Would he bring back the value of naira the way the APC-led government met it before taking over power on May 29, 2015?