CBN TO INCREASE TO BUREAU DE CHANGE.

The financial intermediaries allowed to mediate and deal in retail foreign exchange for small scale demand, Bureaux de change, are to be flooded with more foreign exchange by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from next Monday.

According to CBN's Ag. director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, the apex bank is to offer $10,000 to each Bureau de change weekly from next Monday.

This will be offered in two tranches of $5000 dollars each on Tuesdays and Thursdays at rate to be announced by the CBN on Monday.

Consequently, registered Bureau de change operators are expected to fund their accounts with the CBN adequately on Mondays and Wednesdays.

This week the CBN had driven rate for the Bureau de change and at over the counter sales at banking halls to N360 to the dollar by pumping more dollars into both markets at lower margins for itself.

It then insisted that at this retail level the rate offered to the public should not exceed N360 to the dollar. Banks were also warned not to sell their own allocations meant specifically for invisibles like school fees and medical bills to bureau de change.

However, a couple of questions remain unanswered in the bank's more than a month old and sustained effort to clear backlog in retail demand and make it easier for the interbank and parallel market rates to move closer.

It has worked so far but the first issye has to do with for how long can the CBN provide this broad shoulders for the Naira without running out of forex or depleting reserves? Answers are harder to come by in the public domain because the source of CBN dollar liquidity remains top secret.

Then there is the memory of not too long ago when the CBN under Sanusi Sanusi offered the same $10,000 to bureau de change and the consequence was that registration bureau de change became the biggest goldmine in Nigeria and soon enough, the nation's reserves hit bottoms that led to somersaulting panic measures.

Hope Nigeria is not back on this beaten and costly path once again?

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