VANGUARD
Banks ignore CBN’s directive on domiciliary accounts
Exchange rates converge around N770/$
There are indications that banks are ignoring the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, directive that they should grant their customers unfettered withdrawal of foreign currencies from domiciliary accounts.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s foreign exchange market has recorded a drastic change following the market reforms introduced by the CBN, previous week.
Financial Vanguard findings show that the banks are still restricting the amount of foreign currency that customers can withdraw from their accounts saying the currencies are still scarce.
Dealers and the customers who spoke to Financial Vanguard lamented that the situation has impeded supply of foreign currency to the market.
But the drastic change in both structure and operations of the foreign exchange market, according to the Financial Vanguard findings has resulted in exchange rate convergence by default as the US dollar traded within narrow band across the three segments of the market, namely, the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window, the Bureau De Changes (BDCs) and the black market.
However, for the first time, the exchange rate in the official market (I&E) surpassed what obtained in the black market.
Meanwhile, dealers across all the segments are facing acute scarcity of the US dollars while CBN resumed supply of the foreign currency last week, though at a very low volume.
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