Recently, the CBN announced that it was working alongside commercial banks in Nigeria to clear the $10 billion foreign exchange backlog within the space of 2 weeks.
This announcement was made on Tuesday by the acting CBN Governor, Folashodun Shonubi in a forum where he talked about the issues affecting the foreign exchange market.
He further stated that the backlogs will be addressed in different sections of the forex market. He also added that commercial banks control 75% of the forex transactions, and would work with the CBN to make sure that the backlog is cleared.
Folashodun Shonubi said,
- As a matter of fact, there are numerous obligations that the banks in Nigeria have already taken on. At maturity, they actually made the financing available for those who needed it, the importers. We are discussing, so we can structure their role so that’s very different.
- Then there are some customers who still have their obligations and are part of the restructuring of the banks in Nigeria. To also clarify, the backlog is something we have been discussing for a while, and we expect that we will clear it in the next one or two weeks.
- Today we still intervene in the market, so it’s not as if it has affected our ability to make monies available to banks in the Nigerian foreign exchange market (NAFEX) but when you look at the volumes, I think again we overemphasise what the role and depth of the CBN intervention is.