First of all, no country in the world legalizes the exchange of its currency along the streets, rather in banks through a managed exchange structure driven and monitored by the nation’s central bank.
Against this background, there are indications that even though the current executives at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) met the Bureau De Change (BDC) structure on ground, none of its monetary policies in the last couple of months have shown that it welcomed BDC.
But this may have been too coded for the operators to decode either.
Analysts are upbeat that since the CBN’s forex intervention target since late last year was to achieve a convergence of rates, that target is enough to tell BDC operators that their game is up.
The recent outcry by the President of the Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON), Alhaji Aminu Gwadabe, that the development had rendered the BDCs inactive at the CBN foreign exchange window and also that the sustainability of their business is under serious threat is a clear pointer that CBN is on course in technically rooting out the globally termed illicit currency trading in Nigeria.
In his analogy of the action of the apex bank, Gwadabe noted that the CBN sells dollars to the BDCs at a higher rate compared to what the regulator sells to commercial banks.
He said the development was affecting their business because both the BDCs and banks were targeting the same market segment and customers.
Continuing, ABCON president averred that his men currently buy dollar from the CBN at N360/$1 and sell to end users at N362/$1 while the regulator sells to commercial banks at N358/$1 and the banks sell to end users at N360/$1.
Whereas Gwadabe described the buying rate for the BDCs as uncompetitive and a big disincentive to many forex users to patronise the operators, analysts saw the development as the last lap of BDCs’ existence and a clear sign for operators to start looking for another job.
