Some few months ago, the Central bank of Nigeria, CBN ban deposit of foreign currencies into domiciliary account. However, after pressures was mounted by some economic analysts, small businesses, manufacturing concerns, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and politicians such as Senate President Bukola Saraki, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) monday relaxed some of its foreign currency controls by lifting its ban on foreign currency cash deposits in commercial banks.
Central bank of Nigeria governor; Mr Godwin Emefiele yesterday says, “The bank would now permit commercial banks in the country to begin accepting cash deposits of foreign exchange from their customers.”
According to the governor, the policy objectives for banning the foreign currency deposits have been achieved.
Why CBN Initial Ban Foreign currency Deposit
The CBN governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele explained that the policy was put in place because it discovered that speculators were withdrawing their Naira deposits and using same to buy up foreign currencies and then depositing same in banks and waiting to change the same at higher rates.
In his words: “We discovered that Nigeria was fast approaching the dollarization of the economy. At that time we saw that a lot of people were speculating and there were a lot of speculative attacks on the currency (Naira).
“We saw situations where people were going into their accounts, took the Naira out of their accounts to buy dollars. Some were going to their banks to borrow money to buy dollars and then pass those dollars to their accounts and it got to a point that the banks vaults were full and the banks wanted us to collect the cash and to give them electronic dollars which we said we could not do.
“What we had to do at that time, it was like a flood, a torrent that we had to put break to that flood. At this point, we think, let’s open the tap a little and let’s see whether there will be proper behavior by the operators and the people in the market.”
Following the lifting of the ban placed on foreign currency deposit into domiciliary account. Commercial banks in Nigeria have immediately started accepting foreign currency deposit into domiciliary account. Such banks like the GTBANK, DIAMOND BANK etc. have started accepting dollar deposit.
Well, I hope this kind of thing never happen again because a lot of businesses have been jeopardized.