The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said that the Central Bank of Nigeria’s policy on foreign exchange is not credible enough to attract the much investment inflow into the Nigerian economy.
The Director- General of the Lagos based institution, Muda Yusuf criticized the apex bank’s forex policy during an interview on Channels TV on Thursday.
Yusuf said, “Compliance is also a function of the credibility of policy, If policy is not very credible, compliance will be an issue.”
Recakl that the Central Bank on Tuesday had raised the alarm that the parallel segment of the foreign exchange market is corrupt and does not support the diversification agenda of the government
The CBN Governor had said, “We do not agree that the determining factor for our currency should be based on a market that is tainted, where people go to offer bribes.
“The black market is illegal where people do not provide documentation to support transactions. It is unfortunate and unfair for analysts to say Nigeria’s exchange rate is at 480 per dollar.”
But reacting, Yusuf said, “I am concerned that the issue of foreign exchange doesn’t seem to be high enough in the agenda of the MPC.
“As far as investors are concerned today, apart from the structural problems which you cannot fix immediately, the foreign exchange issue is the biggest problem that we are facing and in all of the communique, there is no adequate reference at least to give comfort to investors that we acknowledge the challenges and this what we are doing about it.
“Lots of investors are in the dark. There is so much uncertainty and one thing that investors don’t like and something that also aggravates risk of investment is uncertainty.
“You are not sure exactly what is happening. The model is not even so clear. So I feel that at least the MPC should be talking more on what it is doing about the foreign exchange situation.
“Of course we all know that there is scarcity, we know that we have challenges with the oil price, oil output and the impact on the foreign exchange reserves that we all know, but what is the framework for managing whatever we have? What is the framework for even incentifying suppliers? Because oil is not the only source of supply.”
The LCCI DG said those in the non-oil export sectors are badly complaining about the bank’s foreign exchange policy.
He said the apex bank needs to encourage legitimate inflows of the dollar, adding that a lot of transactions are going underground in the informal sector.
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