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CBN

  • Account for assets recovered from Cecilia Ibru, Appeal Court orders CBN

    Account for assets recovered from Cecilia Ibru, Appeal Court orders CBN

    The Court of Appeal has affirmed the decision of the Federal High Court in Lagos ordering the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to disclose the total cash and value of properties recovered from a former Managing Director of the defunct Oceanic Bank, Cecilia Ibru, who was convicted of corruption.

    The judgment, which was delivered by Justice Mohammed Idris on October 2, 2012, was affirmed by the appellate court in a lead judgment by Justice Biobele George.

    Justice George held, “In the result, part of the judgment of the Federal High Court, Lagos Division, Coram: M.B. Idris Justice, in suit number FHC/L/CS/494/2012, Mr. Boniface Okezie vs the Central Bank of Nigeria delivered on 2/10/2012 wherein reliefs 1(e),(f) and (g) sought by Mr. Okezie were granted is hereby affirmed.”

    The reliefs marked, 1(e),(f) and (g), sought by Okezie, a shareholder in the defunct bank, were that, “The total cash and value of properties recovered from Cecilia Ibru; the whereabouts of the money and properties recovered; and what part of this cash and properties has been returned to Oceanic Bank and/or its shareholders,” should be disclosed by the CBN.

    Justice Idris had granted the reliefs but the CBN, which was displeased had gone on appeal, which the Court of Appeal dismissed.

     

  • CBN injects $457.3m into forex market

    The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday injected 457.3 million dollars into various segments of the market.

    The CBN Spokesman, Mr Isaac Okorafor in a statement in Abuja, said that both the spot and forwards segments garnered 267.3 million dollars, while the wholesale segment got 100 million dollars.

    Okorafor said the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and invisibles segments comprising basic travel allowance, tuition fee and medical got 50 million dollars and 40 million dollars respectively.

    Meanwhile, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) checks on the volume of trading on the Investors and Exporters foreign exchange window in the past three weeks on the FMDQ platform revealed that 600 million dollars had been sold by both the CBN and autonomous sources.

    Okorafor expressed satisfaction with the level of activities in the market.

    He said that the volume of activities being recorded in the Investors and Exporters forex segment was indicative of the fact that investors were attracted to the Nigerian financial market and the economy in general.

    NAN checks also revealed that the Naira closed at N383 to a dollar at the parallel market.

  • Amosun escapes death as CBN bullion van rams into convoy

    Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun on Thursday escaped death in an auto accident at the Ibafo axis of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.

    The governor’s Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mr Juwon Soyinka, said in a statement that the incident happened when a bullion van belonging to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ran into Amosun’s convoy in the area.

    He said: “The incident which occurred around Ibafo while the governor was travelling to Lagos for an official assignment, resulted in damage to the escort vehicles in the governor’s convoy.

    “The CBN convoy drivers, driving dangerously, attempted to overtake the governor’s convoy without regard for the safety of other road users.

    “On sensing danger, the governor’s escort commander used a public address system mounted on his vehicle to warn the CBN convoy drivers to desist from such reckless driving.

    “Not only was the governor’s escort commander ignored, the CBN convoy drivers went ahead to crush his vehicle and subsequently went after other vehicles in the governor’s convoy, including his official car.

    ” The CBN convoy was later brought to a halt by the security team attached to the governor,” Soyinka said.

    Amosun, according to Soyinka, described the manner of driving of the drivers in the CBN convoy as reckless.

    “We will not allow such senseless and reckless behaviour in Ogun State,” Soyinka quoted Amosun as saying.

    Soyinka also said: “ If this could happen to a governor within his territory, you can imagine what they would do to our citizens who are simply going about their legitimate business.

    “Governor Amosun, who expressed disappointment at the reckless manner in which the CBN bullion van convoy moved on the road, warned that such act of impunity will no longer be tolerated within the borders of Ogun.’’

    He explained that the governor had cause to personally caution reckless CBN convoy drivers in the state on a number of occasions.

    “On several occasions, the Ogun State governor had to personally turn back reckless CBN bullion van drivers who often drive against traffic with impunity on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway,” he said.

     

     

     

    NAN

     

  • Stop playing politics with exchange rate, Soludo warns FG, CBN

    A former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Prof. Charles Soludo has warned the Federal Government and Central Bank of Nigeria to stop playing politics with the nation’s exchange rate to strengthen the Naira.

    Soludo noted that the apex bank’s official exchange rate of N306 to the dollar has become redundant, describing it as an instrument for rent seekers and arbitrary allocation of scarce foreign exchange in the country.

    As a result, he said the CBN must achieve a unified market-determined exchange rate by eliminating the current multiple exchange rates as a matter of urgency.

    Soludo spoke in a keynote address at the eight annual Pan-Africa Investor Conference organised by Renaissance Capital, an international investment bank, in Lagos on Wednesday.

    He said, “The general price level has already adjusted because that’s the primary price indicator in the market. The prices that people hear, i.e. the exchange rate that people talk about is the parallel market rate. Anybody who says it is irrelevant is not discussing Nigeria as an economy. The official one is like the time when you had the price control regime.

    “Even those who had accessed forex at the official rate, when they are fixing their prices, they are fixing their prices in comparison with the imported ones, which are taking signals from the parallel market rate. So the general price level has adjusted there. The official exchange rate is redundant; it is just for rent and for arbitrary allocations.”

    Soludo also advised the CBN to dump its current import substitution policy and adopt an export-oriented industrial strategy if it hoped to take Nigeria out of its present economic woes.

    According to him, the country is implementing import substitution is a crude way and it must remove the ban placed on importers of some 41 items from accessing dollars at the official interbank foreign exchange window.

    The former CBN governor said, “Every regime comes to ban and the next unbans it. That is not the way to protect an economy. If you have a market-determined exchange rate regime and you do not want certain items, you put tariffs. The exchange rate plus the tariffs will make, for instance, the imported tomatoes uneconomical.

    “That is where you deal with it on a sustainable basis. There is a need to think of a life beyond crude oil. We need not just import substitution; we need infrastructure and export-oriented industrialisation strategy. We cannot do that with this kind of crude inward look.”

    According to Soludo, China has over one billion population and has become a successful country through export-oriented industrialisation, adding, “China was not doing import substitution.”

    “That’s why they have built trillions of dollars in foreign reserves with weak currency that makes import into their country expensive and makes exporting very rewarding,” he added.

    The former CBN governor said many companies that needed some of the 41 items had folded up and that thousands of jobs had been lost.

    “Yet there is a better, sound, transparent and sustainable way of achieving what you intend to achieve. To create prosperity for all and lift millions out of the job market, we need industrialisation; we need to be exporting. We must fix the infrastructure,” he added.

    Soludo also said that Nigeria’s public finance was broken because the country’s total expenditure was in excess of its total revenue.

    He said, “In a regime where you have the total recurrent expenditure in excess of your total revenue, there is an issue. You know people talk about recurrent expenditure being 70 per cent of the budget; they are including the debt. As a percentage of your total revenue, you recurrent expenditure is a hundred and something per cent, which means as it is today, part of our borrowing is actually to finance recurrent expenditure.”

    TheNewsGuru.com reports that Soludo was governor of Central Bank from 29 May 2004 – 29 May 2009.

  • Electronic fraud: CBN reiterates need to secure payment systems

    Electronic fraud: CBN reiterates need to secure payment systems

    The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Wednesday reiterated the need to secure payment systems in the country to stem fraudulent activities in the financial sector.

    The Director, Banking and Payment Department, CBN, Mr Dipo Fatokun stated this while presenting a keynote address on emerging regulations to protect online, mobile and payment services in Abuja.

    The workshop, organised by Maxut Consulting Experts and Vasco Data Security in collaboration with the CBN was centered on the emerging trends in banking and payment systems and regulatory and security implications.

    Fatokun said there was the need for continuous effort by stakeholders to develop efficient, reliable and electronic payment systems in the country.

    According to him, one of the key tasks of the CBN is to promote the smooth operations of an efficient payment system, which is core to the financial stability of any country.

    He said payment systems had important implications for monetary policy implementation and efficiency of the economy.

    “To achieve broad objectives of the Payments System, CBN develops and regulates the implementation of regulation to facilitate the growth of initiatives that will harmonise payment operations in the country.

    “In its regulatory role, the CBN is careful to approach the dynamic of payment systems policy creation as a delicate balance in order not to stifle innovation and growth in the payment systems.

    “In addition, the bank has developed a financial inclusion strategy, the PSV 2020 Vision and cash-less policy drive with specific targets and timelines.

    “The sustenance of these initiatives will ensure that financial services are provided at affordable costs to sections of disadvantaged and low-income segments of the society.’’

    Fatokun explained that because of the emergence of new technologies, there was a continuous need to update payments system regulation as a result of its dynamic and ever changing nature.

    “Technological developments have led to disruptive innovations by financial Technology (FinTech) companies in the financial system.

    “These innovations have facilitated the expansion of electronic payments and helped in providing financial services to previously unreached groups.’’

    He said the CBN had tried to incorporate all service providers into the regulatory space but some preferred to remain in the unregulated space due to perceived difficulties of licensing and regulation.

    He further said that the participation of the apex bank in the workshop would enhance the knowledge of staff on the operations of non-financial service providers in the payments system.

    Fatokun urged banks in the country to ensure standardisation in all transactions while making available their Application Programming Interphase (API).

    API is a set of functions and procedures that allows access to data or a service in order to provide greater functionality to the application user.

    He said banks had been directed to make their APIs available to FinTechs but Nigerian banks would fully implement this when implications of its availability was fully understood.

    Earlier, Mr Micheal Odusami, the President, Maxut Consulting said the workshop would ensure the apex bank was abreast with the current trends and future of the industry.

    Odusami said the workshop would also expose the country to what was obtainable from different parts of the World in the sector as some countries were a little more advanced than us.

    “They are already putting regulations in place to address some banking issues and sharing them here will see how some of the stuff we are already doing will help us.

    On the level of online security risk in the country, Odusami said a lot of the challenges faced was around social engineering, people impersonating other people and so on.

    He said that majority of the fraud recorded within the country was carried out by people inside the system itself, “people that know how the system works and they compromise it’’.

    He commended efforts by the CBN toward ensuring the mitigation of fraud in the banking sector but added that a lot still needed to be done to secure transactions in the sector.

     

     

    NAN

  • Forex: CBN injects fresh $81.2m for BTA, PTA, others

    Forex: CBN injects fresh $81.2m for BTA, PTA, others

    The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, on Monday in its series of intervention to boost the Naira and made the dollar available to all sectors of the economy injected the sum of $81.2 million in the invisible and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) segments.

    According to the apex bank, the fresh intervention will cover for invisibles such as Basic Travel Allowances (BTA), Personal Travel Allowances (PTA), medical bills and tuition fees, among others.

    A breakdown of the interventions indicates that the Bank provided the sum of $44 million to meet customers’ requests for invisibles. The Acting Director, Corporate Communications at the,CBN, Isaac Okorafor, confirmed the intervention, adding that the SMEs segment also received a boost of $37.2 million.

    According to him, “the Bank remains committed to ensuring that there is enough supply of forex to genuine customers to achieve the goal of forex rates convergence.”

    While expressing satisfaction with the current stability in the forex market, Okorafor reiterated his confidence in the ability of the CBN to sustain its interventions in the market.

    It will be recalled that the CBN on Friday, May 5, 2017, sold a total sum of $389 million to authorized dealers in the retail sector of the market as spot and forwards. Of the sum, $87.885 was for spot sales, while $300.8 million was sold as forwards in three tenors of 30, 45 and 60 days, respectively.

  • Forex crisis: CBN set to inject additional dollars this week

    Forex crisis: CBN set to inject additional dollars this week

    The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is set to inject more dollars through intervention segments of the market, thereby heightening expectations that the Naira will appreciate significantly during the week.

    The spokesman of the apex Bank, Isaac Okorafor, while exchanging views with news men over the weekend, confirmed the anticipated interventions in most segments of the market during the week, with effect from today, Monday 8th,2017.

    According to him, the Bureau De Change (BDC) and the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) along with other major segments will also receive the adequate intervention with a view to providing liquidity in the entire foreign exchange market.

    Meanwhile, manufacturers have praised the CBN over the foreign exchange management strategy adopted recently.

    The Director General of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Segun Ajayi-Kadiri, was recently quoted as saying the, “the recent pronouncement of the CBN comes as a relief. If the intervention is sustained, there’s no doubt that we will have continued improvement in sourcing raw materials.”

    TheNewsGuru.com reports that the apex bank has constantly release tranches of the United States dollars in all segments of the market in order to boost the Naira which has been on the decline for a while now.

  • Forex restriction on 41 items yet to be lifted − CBN

    Central Bank of Nigeria on Thursday said it had yet to lift the foreign exchange restriction placed on the importation of the 41 items earlier banned from accessing forex in the interbank market.

    There had been media reports which had suggested that the apex bank had lifted the restriction through a circular.

    But the CBN in a statement issued by its Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, Isaac Okorafor, said the report was untrue as no such decision had been taken.

    The statement reads in part, “The attention of the Central Bank of Nigeria has been drawn to a report by a news agency to the effect that the CBN has reversed part of its policy on the non-eligibility of some import items for forex sale on the interbank forex market.

    “We wish to state that the report and its interpretations are wrong.

    “The CBN has not reversed it policy on the ineligibility of the 41 items for forex sale through the interbank forex market.”

    The statement said the media report is a misinterpretation of its revised circular on documentation requirements for allocation of foreign exchange for small-scale importation dated May 4,2017.

    The circular had stated that importers of items classified as “Not valid for Forex” with transactions value of $20,000 and below per quarter shall now qualify for allocation of foreign exchange subject to the completion of form Q.”

    The CBN said this provision does not refer to the 41 items that remain ineligible for forex sale in the internal market.

  • Forex: CBN lifts ban on Keystone Bank, others

    Keystone Bank on Thursday said the Central bank of Nigeria(CBN) had readmitted it into the spot and wholesale forwards segment of the foreign exchange market.

    The bank said in a statement issued in Lagos that the CBN readmitted it sequel to the provision of evidence of sales of foreign exchange to Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SMEs).

    It also said the re-admission was because the bank had been selling to the SMEs since the introduction of the special window to such businesses.

    TheNewsGuru.com reports that the CBN on Monday banned 14 banks from the weekly wholesale spot and forwards market leaving only eight banks.

    According to the CBN, the banks were sanctioned for failure to adhere to the foreign exchage supply policy to SMEs thereby frustrating the efforts of small businesses that needed foreign exchange.

    The eight banks that were not suspended include; Access Bank Plc, Diamond Bank Plc, Fidelity Bank Plc, Heritage Bank Plc, Jaiz Bank, Sterling Bank Plc, Unity Bank Plc and Zenith Bank

    Mr Hafiz Bakare, the Acting Managing Director of Keystone Bank, said: “SMEs are an integral part of the economy of Nigeria and as such we at Keystone Bank are committed to supporting this sector.

    “We are pleased to have clarified the banks position with the CBN as we have always shown support for SMEs through our work with farmers, manufacturers, schools and other business owners.”

    Bakare said that Keystone Bank would always support CBN in ensuring the growth and development of the economy.

     

     

     

    NAN

     

  • JUST IN: Forex: CBN lifts ban on 41 items

    JUST IN: Forex: CBN lifts ban on 41 items

    The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has lifted the restriction on 41 items listed as ineligible for foreign exchange, with a condition.

    “Importers of items classified as not valid for forex with transactions value of $20,000 and below per quarter shall now qualify for allocation of foreign exchange,” the bank said in a circular.

    TheNewsGuru.com reports that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in July 2015, restricted 41 items, including vegetable oil, poultry products, toothpicks, cosmetics, plastic and rubber products, among others, from accessing foreign exchange from the interbank foreign exchange market.

    Details later…