By Dipo Olowookere
Acting Director in charge of Corporate Communication at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Isaac Okorafor, has disclosed that not less than $1.1 billion has been traded in 3 weeks by investors in the special foreign exchange market window created for them by the apex bank recently.
Precisely in April 2017, the banking industry watchdog created a special platform for investors, exporters in a bid to make forex easily available to them.
This happened after the bankers’ bank had earlier created a special window for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) and foreign airlines in the country with an allocation of $20,000 per quarter.
Since the window was created, there had been stability in the forex market, reducing pressure on the parallel market, which many of these investors hitherto had to run to when they needed forex to carry out their operations.
Reacting to questions on Twitter on Thursday night during an interaction session with Nigerians tagged #CBNspeaks, the CBN spokesman said the various moves already taken to ease the pressure on Naira had yielded good results.
According to Mr Okorafor, “So far, the investors’ window has traded $1.1 billion in 3 weeks with (the) CBN being a fringe player.”
However, he acknowledged that more work was needed to be done, but assured Nigerians that the apex bank would continue to ensure availability of forex to investors.
According to the CBN, transactions eligible to access the investors’ window include loan repayments, loan interest repayments, Dividends/Income Remittances, capital repatriation, management services fees, software subscription fees, technology transfer agreements, and personal home remittances.
Adedapo Adesanya