Banks Seek Customers To Buy Surplus 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.

It would be recalled that in an effort to support and shore-up the value of Naira, the CBN resolved to flood commercial banks with dollars.

Sources said the banks are reported to be holding excess Forex and were seeking customers to buy the foreign currencies. The banks have cleared the backlog of requests for foreign currencies for basic travel allowance, school fees and medicals.

According to  a banker, his bank had so much dollars that its marketers were asked to encourage customers to request for the greenback.The source added that the bank wanted to avoid a situation where it would be forced to return excess Forex to the CBN.

Doing so, according to him, would force the CBN to reduce the quantity of Forex sold to the bank.

Another source said following the CBN intervention, his bank had succeeded in clearing all pending requests for Forex as far back as September, 2016.

Also, a source in one of the new generation banks commended the decision of the CBN to flood the market with Forex, thereby allowing the banks to meet legitimate requests from its customers.

In a data released by the CBN, the apex bank, within three weeks, has injected more than 1.4 billion dollars for both wholesale and retail intervention into the Interbank Forex Market.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Economic Associates, Mr Ayo Teriba is optimistic that the CBN would be able to sustain its intervention on the forex market. Teriba told NAN that increase in oil production and high oil prices had increased the foreign reserve base of the country.

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