The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) after several warnings has concluded plans to wield the big stick of sanctions to exporters who fail to repatriate foreign exchange (forex) proceeds from their businesses into the economy.
Director Banking Supervision at CBN, Abdullahi Ahmad, who spoke after the Bankers’ Committee meeting in Lagos, said CBN will rely on a provision in the CBN Foreign Exchange Manual that mandates all exporters to repatriate their proceeds back to the country to support the local currency and the economy to give sanctions.
According to the manual, proceeds of oil and non-oil exports are to be repatriated into the export proceeds domiciliary accounts of their exporters’ accounts within 90 days for oil exports and 180 days for non-oil exports.
The manual added further that “Where this policy is violated, the collecting bank will be liable to a fine of 10 per cent of the Free On Board value of the transaction, including other appropriate penalties as provided in the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act”.
“Likewise, where the exporter fails to repatriate the proceeds into the domiciliary account within the stipulated period, the exporter will be barred from participating in all the segments of foreign exchange market in Nigeria.
On why the sanction has become necessary, Ahmad said “Many exporters, who benefited from Federal Government’s support scheme, continually failed to comply with this directive, adding that the defaulters would be barred from other banking services”.
“CBN had continued to take strategic steps to ensure that Nigeria exporters’ businesses thrived and that not sending earned dollar back to the economy was not proper.
“The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 0.5 per cent, which brought the country out of recession, needed to be improved on, and called for more hard work to achieve better growth for the economy. The stability in the foreign exchange market, moderation in inflation and capital market recovery are indications that the economy is getting better.
