CBN to ban more items from forex demand

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will soon add more imported items to the list of those excluded from getting official forex allocation.

The bank currently blacklists 40 items, including toothpicks and private jets, but Godwin Emefiele, the CBN governor, said on Friday that more items will soon be affected as the bank seeks to encourage local production.

He was speaking with journalists after meeting with Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo at the presidential villa in Abuja.

Emefiele said the government will resist devaluing the naira which some experts have suggested as a necessary measure to curtail the pressure of forex.

Clarifying that the bank does not have the power to ban the importation of any item, he said the CBN would only exclude certain items that are imported into the country from obtaining foreign exchange from the Nigerian foreign exchange market since such items can be produced locally.

Emefiele said: “We held a stakeholders’ meeting with the organised private sector and prominent and leading private sector stakeholders were at that meeting. It was not meant for the press.

“The purpose of that meeting was to engage the private sector to make the private sector understand that government realises that they are engine of growth and we also used the opportunity to explain to them the basis and purpose of those policies that we have introduced and at the end of that meeting they were very happy.

“They saw our position and indeed at the end of that meeting, some of them in fact  provided us with the names of some items that should be included in the list that should be excluded from foreign exchange.

“I must confess that at this stage, given the determination of some of the organised sectors to say that yes, they produce these items and that we should exclude those items from foreign exchange, we are reviewing that list and we may in due course include more items products that can be produced in Nigeria in the list of items that will be excluded from foreign exchange in the Nigerian foreign exchange market.”

He also said the CBN was devising other means of stablising the economy.

“There has been a lot of talk on whether or not we want to depreciate our currency again. The truth is that we had adjusted the currency by depreciating it from N155 to N197 in February this year,” he said.

“There is no intention to depreciate or adjust the currency any longer.

“The president has been very clear on this. The vice-president has been very clear on this and let me further reiterate our position at the Central Bank of Nigeria, that we are not considering any further depreciation of the currency.

“What we are trying to concentrate on right now is how to improve and deepen the foreign exchange market by improving supply of foreign exchange into the market.

“We are trying to encourage people to export and earn export proceeds and use them to import whatever they need to import.

“We are also concentrating on how to reduce the import of items that we can produce in the country today.”