By Chinwendu Obienyi

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) yesterday, urged the Organised Private Sector (OPS) to bring in proceeds of foreign exchange earnings back to support the CBN to meet its FX demand.

This was even as the apex bank advised the organisedprivate sector to focus on getting funds for their businesses from the Bank of Industry (BOI) and the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) rather than focusing on Deposit Money Banks (DMBs).

The Deputy Director, Banking Services, CBN, Egboagwu Ezulu, stated this at the Association of Corporate Affairs Managers of Banks (ACAMB) maiden national stakeholders conference in Lagos.

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While urging the OPS to take advantage of the various interventions of the CBN to boost output through the BOI, DBN and commercial banks, Ezulu said the dumping of FX offshore is contributing to the challenges of FX supply in the country.

“We are taking FX out of this country and dumping offshore when we are told to bring them back because if Nigerians are bringing them back home, we would not be talking about the challenges of FX. There is a challenge and we have to do the right thing.

That is why the CBN introduced the RT200 to encourage you to bring back the dollar you are saying is scarce but in the books of the banks we see billions of dollars that have been exported out of the country and the OPS are not bringing it back. So, the question is how do we finance FX demand?” Ezulu queried.

On how OPS can get funding for output, he said, “When you talk about financing small businesses, the CBN has done a lot of funding to the sector, and has established two entities (BOI and DBN) for this purpose.