The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) says CBN needs an effective monitoring framework to checkmate any incongruous Forex activity in commercial banks.
The President of the association, Dr. Frank Jacobs, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja. He said that the current government made some efforts at addressing the challenges in the economy, adding that the policy actions implemented so far had not addressed the challenges.
According to him, CBN’s directive to commercial banks was to allocate 60 per cent of all available Forex to manufacturers for raw-materials and machinery importation. “Many manufacturers who applied for Forex, based on the directive, did not get any as the bankers claimed that Forex was not available. “ It may also appear that the monitoring framework of the CBN is not strong enough to checkmate any incongruous Forex activity of the banks.
“Another policy promulgated by the government through the CBN is the 41 items excluded from the inter-bank Forex market; this, however, adversely affected some essential raw-material inputs. “This has not been very positive as it has led to closure of a number of factories which could not import the needed raw-materials for their production.
“However, the policy is not altogether bad as it may stimulate investments in some raw-materials that were affected but such investments require adequate gestation period to take off,’’Jacobs said. Jacobs said there was an alleged release of N720 billion which government earmarked for infrastructure development.
“We have not actually seen the implementation exercise; perhaps they are waiting for the rains to be over. NAN recalled that CBN had earlier ordered authorised dealers (banks) to allocate 60 per cent of their total oreign exchange, Forex purchases from all sources (interbank inclusive) to manufacturers. NAN also recalled that 40 per cent of the foreign exchange was to be channeled to other users for trade and other obligations.