Naira Is Appreciation Faster Than Expected – BDC Operators

The Association of the Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) says the Nigerian currency Naira has appreciated faster than expected against the United States’ Dollar.

The President of the Association, Aminu Gwadabe, spoke virtually on Business Incorporated programme on Tuesday on Channels Television.

Gwadabe said as at Tuesday afternoon, the BDC operators were buying the dollar at N980/$1 and selling at N1,020/$1, as against the official rate of N1161/$1 by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The naira has appreciated against the dollar in recent weeks, gaining over 40%, from about N1,900/$ early January to about N1,100/$1 now.

He said, “It’s a long journey, it did not start today. It’s a culmination of many factors, even though it happened faster than expected. I want to congratulate the management of the Central Bank. For the first time in the history of (Nigeria), over the past 15 years, we have never seen where the open market is lower than the CBN rate. So, kudos to the Central Bank and congratulations to Nigerians.

“There is calmness now and we have not been seeing speculations coming into the market which hitherto has been the albatross that was keeping the naira under pressure.

“What we are seeing now is to show (that) what happened before has no any economic fundamentals; it’s just a bubble and the bubble has burst.

“This happened with some stringent, concerted policies, stress test policies that started with the unification of the market, it came with a mixture of feelings, a lot of disequilibrium, however, it has eventually achieved its objective of convergence. All is to converge the exchange rate so that we can have a single market rate. So, congratulations to the Presidency.”

The apex bank has since introduced a number of strategies aimed at strengthen the naira against foreign exchange include settling about $7 billion valid foreign exchange backlogs, selling FX to over 1,500 BDC operators at official rate, clampdown on cryptocurrency platforms like Binance accused of speculations, amongst others.