The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has advised members of the organised private sector (OPS) to always ensure that they repatriate foreign exchange (FX) proceeds to the apex bank in order to ease FX pressure in the country.
Deputy Director, Banking Services, CBN, Egboagwu Ezulu, at a national stakeholders’ conference of the Association of Corporate Affairs Managers of Banks (ACAMB) in Lagos, advised OPS to take advantage of the various intervention schemes of the CBN through the Bank of Industry, the Development Bank of Nigeria and commercial banks, to boost their output.
He said: “We are taking FX out of this country and dumping offshore when we were told to bring them back. If Nigerians are bringing back FX, we would not be talking about challenges of FX. There is a challenge for individuals and businesses to do the right thing.
“That is why the CBN introduced the RT200 to encourage you to bring back the dollar you are saying is scarce, but in the books of the banks we see billions of dollars that have been exported out of the country and the OPS are not bringing it back, so how do we finance FX demand?”
On how OPS could get funding for output, he said: “When you talk about financing small businesses, the CBN has done a lot of funding to the sector alluding to trillions of naira and has established two entities for this purpose. Has the manufacturing sector approached the entities for the funds available rather than emphasising on the commercial banks?
“The manufacturing sector should put pressure on the Bank of Industry and Development Bank of Nigeria to source funds, and when we see a lot of pressure from those two entities, the CBN instead of going through commercial banks would push those funds to those two entities rather than going to the commercial banks who would give double-digit loans.
“I want to appeal that industrialists, as well as small businesses should approach those two entities to get funding.”
