Naira falls to N308 against dollar as BDCs close shop

Bureau De Change (BDC) operators have opted out of business following the stoppage of supply of foreign exchange (FX) to them by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Meanwhile, the CBN has not yet paid the N35 million caution deposits to each eligible BDC operator after they have applied for it as requested by the regulator.

Consequently, the nation’s currency, the naira on Monday depreciated further against the dollar to N308/$ in some part of Lagos State.

It weakened against the dollar yesterday by N1 or 0.33 percent each at the BDC segment of the FX market and at the parallel market, BusinessDay check reveals.

After trading on Monday, the local currency closed at N305 against the dollar compared with N304/$ traded on Friday last week at the BDC segment. It closed at N307/$ as against N306/$ on Friday last week at the parallel market.

However, at the inter-bank FX market, the naira gained N0.51k or 0.26 percent against the greenback as it closed at N198.85k/$ on Monday from N199.36k/$ on Friday last week, according to data from FMDQ.

The CBN’s clearing rate remained unchanged, closing at N197.00k/$ at the inter-bank foreign exchange as seen on FMDQ website.

“There is no business anymore for the BDCs. Many operators have asked their staff not to come to work. Many BDCs have applied for the N35 million but the CBN has not paid,” Andrew Elueni, managing director/CEO, Flawless Capital Limited, told BusinessDay on phone.

The autonomous market is left for those BDCs who have energy for small business, he said, adding that the volume of business at the autonomous market is attractive.

The CBN had last month discontinued its sales of FX to BDCs, adding that operators in this segment of the market would now need to source their FX from autonomous source. The CBN noted that it would deploy more resources to monitoring these sources to ensure that no operator was in violation of its anti-money laundering laws.