Banks now ‘begging customers’ to buy forex

Commercial banks are now seeking customers to buy the surplus foreign currencies they have after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) continually flooded the market with foreign exchange.

NAN quoted a banker as saying his bank had so much dollars that marketers were asked to encourage customers to request for the greenback.

The apex bank has been making efforts to strengthen the naira and ease the stress experienced by customers seeking forex.

The source said that the bank wanted to avoid a situation where it would be forced to return excess forex to the CBN because doing so would force the apex bank to reduce the quantity of forex sold to the bank.

First Bank and Guaranty Trust bank have reportedly succeeded in clearing all pending requests for forex, with First Bank clearing requests as far back as September 2016.

“Right now, we take two or three pages in the newspaper to publish names of legitimate individuals and companies that we disbursed forex to,” a Heritage bank source told NAN.

“We have more than enough foreign exchange to meet the request of our customers for school fees and others.”

Within three weeks, the apex bank has injected more than $1.4 billion for both wholesale and retail intervention into the interbank forex market.

Ayo Teriba, chief executive officer, Economic Associates, said CBN should be able to sustain the foreign exchange market intervention.

“We are back to a situation where the forex at the disposal of the CBN is likely to go up,” he said.

“The CBN could not intervene in the forex market in 2016 because of low oil production, prices and because foreign reserves were also low.

“Today, oil price is up, reserves have also gone up, the outlook of the oil prices is stable and production in Nigeria is going back to capacity; so it has the capacity to intervene.

“In a couple of months, the apex bank should be able to meet all of the demands and all the multiple exchange rates will converge.”