CBN Directs Sellers Of Forex Above $10,000 To Declare Source

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said sellers of foreign exchange of $10,000 and above to Bureau de Change (BDC) operators must declare the source of the forex.

The apex bank stated this on Friday in a revised regulatory framework to curtail excess BDCs and check uncertainty in the forex market.

It also mandated the sellers to comply with all the Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations and foreign exchange laws and regulations.

Also, the CBN said customers can move foreign currencies from their domiciliary accounts with Nigerian banks to BDCs.

It said: “All digital/transfer purchases of foreign currencies shall be credited to the BDC’s Nigerian domicile account.

“Payments for all digital/transfer purchases of foreign currency by a BDC shall be by transfer to the customer’s Naira account. If the customer is non-resident (whether Nigerian or not), a BDC may issue the customer a prepaid NGN card.”

Tourists, diaspora returnees, and expatriates with foreign exchange inflows from employment, travel, investments, or their domiciliary accounts are among the sources of foreign currencies that BDCs can obtain, according to the financial regulator.

Other allowable sources mentioned by CBN are residents with foreign exchange inflows from work, travel, investment, or their domiciliary accounts, and International Money Transfer Operators (IMTOs).

CBN also listed embassies, hotels that are authorised buyers of foreign currencies, the Nigerian foreign exchange market (NFEM), as well as any other source that the apex bank may specify.