CBN’ll Eliminate Official, Black Market Exchange Rate Gap –Adeosun
The Central Bank of Nigeria will try to
eliminate the spread between the official and black market exchange
rates against the dollar, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun,
has said.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun
The naira is trading on the parallel
market some 40 per cent lower than the official rate as low global crude
prices have dried up vital oil revenues and pushed Africa’s largest
economy into recession, according to Reuters.
The CBN scrapped a 16-month-old peg of
197 naira to the dollar in June, but it continues to trade in the
official market, so that the naira remains far stronger against the
dollar there than on the parallel market. The government has blamed that
black market for damaging the already shaky economy.
“The CBN is working on the elimination
of arbitrage,” Adeosun told Reuters by text message, without saying how
this would be done.
She earlier told a conference that the central bank was working on removing the price difference.
Adeosun said this had been in response
to a question about manufacturers not getting incentives to produce
given an arbitrage opportunity.
The spokesperson for the CBN, Isaac
Okorafor, said the bank was working towards “ensuring that the forex
market operates as effectively as we would envisage.”
He said the aim was to “ensure there is no black market,” but did not give details of how this would be achieved.
The naira has traded around 305.5 naira
to the dollar on the official interbank market since August, while it
was quoted at 487 to the dollar on the parallel market on Monday.
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