COMFORT EKELEME
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Thursday said it has significantly eased off the problem of manufactures and Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in the forex market.
This is even as the regulatory authority maintained that there is greater supply of forex now, saying that it has been able to ease off the fraudulent demand for foreign exchange.
Fielding questions from newsmen in Lagos at the end of its Bankers Committee Meeting, CBN’s Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, maintained that following the apex bank’s Anchor Borrowers Scheme, agric production has greatly improved.
According to him, “the improvement is impacting on food prices because they have been encouraged greatly by CBN’s anchor borrower program. So, the collective actions of all these no doubt, point to a direction to growth and you can see inflation has come down. We strongly believe that the economy is on its way out of the recession.
“What drove the economy to a recession firstly is the very acute foreign exchange crunch that limited production. Secondly the fact that oil could not flow due militancy in the Niger Delta and of course the price of oil fell drastically. Those are some of the issues. Now stability has been restored in the Niger delta and we have every hope it would continue that way. So production and oil supply has increased and the price of oil has stabilized not as much as we want it in the international market,” he said.
Briefing newsmen earlier at the end of the meeting, Managing Director of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe, noted that the Nigerian banks are now committed to having travel desk and cubicles in most of the branches, adding that appropriate exchange rate would be duly published.
Wigwe said:”The committee deliberated on topical issues that had to do with fraud and one of that is the electronic and card fraud and part of the deliberation was that there is need to create a central depositary which is a database of suspected fraud through the system.
“So, once that database is set up and there is suspected case going through the system, we can have ways of ensuring there is strong detergent for people who are known as fraudsters in the system. Hopefully if that is implemented what you will see is that the level of fraud which is coming through SMS and bank cards will decease significantly. Very strict measures will be implemented to make sure that people don’t do it and repeat offenders are taken out of the banking system to make sure that we sanitize the system”.
Also speaking, Managing Director of Ecobank Nigeria, Charles Kie, the Bankers’ Committee also reemphasized the need for all the banks to continue supporting the economy and ensure that they can effectively help the country get out the recession.
According to him, all the measures that have been taken are meant to support that, adding that the banking industry is taken a strong view on the level of support they want to bring. “We are all committed to the decision that have been taken in terms of improving the FX market and also on the decision that has been taken on ensuring that fosters are going forward are not only identified and taken out of the system in order to ensure there is sustainability in the banking industry.
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