- The Central Bank released a circular Thursday instructing Bureau De Change (BDC’s) that from August 1 2015, all transactions consummated by the BDCs must have a Bank Verification Number of their customers.
- The CBN also asked BDCs to provide bank verification numbers of their own directors or risk being booted out of the foreign exchange market.
- This move is basically a continuation of its strategy of tightening up forex inflows and outflows (capital controls)
- The CBN has issued several circulars in recent weeks aimed at ensuring the parallel market continues to be starved of funds.
- Nairametrics sees this move as a strategy to ensure the arbitrage created by the wide disparity between the interbank market rate and the parallel market rate is not exploited.
- In the past, Nigerian banks have engaged in these activities (otherwise called round-tripping) where banks on behalf of their customers use conduits to purchase money from the interbank market and then sell at a higher spread at the black market
- See circular here