The CBN had previously fixed $30,000 as the limit that commercial banks could sell to BDCs..
But at the end of the Bankers’ Committee meeting in Abuja, the Managing Director of UBA, Kennedy Uzoka, told journalists that the CBN decided to increase the limited to drive down the price of getting FOREX.
Mr. Uzoka said the decision was informed by the plight of parents and guardians who have not been able to get enough FOREX to pay the school fees of their wards as schools, particularly at this time that schools are about to open and people would require Basic Travel Allowance (BTA) and personal transport allowance (PTA) to travel.
Members of the bankers’ committee urged BDCs to henceforth approach banks and apply for FOREX allocations foreign exchange.
The bankers’ committee said the decision was not a reversal of the previous one, but a review as part of efforts to help the country find solutions to the FOREX supply crisis.
CBN spokesperson, Isaac Okorafor, said the bank “will now have to monitor strictly that people do not abuse the process.
Meanwhile, the managing director of Zenith Bank, Peter Amangbo, has said in keeping with the coming celebration of World Savings Day, all banks in Nigeria would break into different groups to cover all the country’s 776 Local Government Areas to sensitize the grassroots on the need to save massively.
Sensitizing the grassroots by all banks, Mr. Amangbo said, “is to grow the pool of funds available for lending and the need to save,” noting that “there will always be disparity in savings and interest rate”.
On the recent directive by the CBN to all banks to open savings account with zero amount, Mr. Amangbo said the decision was not new as it had been in effect for about two years now.
On the need to have bank branches in all parts of the country, Mr. Amangbo said people don’t need physical branches in Local Government Areas (LGAs) any more, with mobile applications now the game changers.
The CBN’s director of Banking Supervision, Tokunbo Martins, said a decision was taken during the meeting to commence disbursing the special intervention fund to support primary agricultural projects and core manufacturing.
Mrs. Martins said the CBN took from the special intervention fund that has been with it for a long time, pointing out that it would be “for projects that support import substitution, projects that will help protect foreign exchange such that whatever we were importing before can be manufactured.”
She said this fund would be released to such projects,to provide more liquidity and financing to important projects at single digit interest rate.”
She also clarified the decision to have banks write off their non-performing loans (NPLs), saying it was not an arbitrary decision, but only NPLs that had fully been provided for in the books for the banks.
Source: PREMIUMTIMESNG
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