The Director, Monetary Policy Department of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Moses Tule has blamed the protracted crash of the naira on currency speculators.
Tule said the speculators mounted pressure on the local currency ith a view to making excess gain from currency trading.
The naira had on Wednesday, December 16, exchanged N270 to a dollar, and may continue to fall as government’s dollar earning decline.
In a statement from the apex bank, Tule said the currency speculators were determined to put severe pressure on the monetary authorities expecting the CBN to buckle and further devalue the naira.
The CBN, he said, had a responsibility for the economy and would not fold its arms and allow economic predators feast on the nation’s commonwealth through arbitrage.
While maintaining that the only rate in the currency market was N196.47 to a dollar, he wondered why indigenous operators in the Bureau de Change (BDC)chose to make huge profit at the expense of customers in genuine need of the currency.
He lamented that while international operators such as Travelex traded at not more than N7 above the rate, indigenous operators preferred to make profits as high as N50.
“We know what the fundamentals of the economy are and we will continue to take the right economic decisions on what to do and not when people sitting out there speculating on the currency think the naira should be devalued so that they could make profit out of it,” he said.
He added: “No country quotes its exchange rate with reference to the BDCs rates. The currency has a reference rate and that is the interbank exchange rate.”
This post was last modified on December 23, 2015 6:40 AM