Atedo Peterside Reacts As CBN Lifts Forex Restriction On Rice, Others

The founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc., Atedo Peterside, has backed the move by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to lift the ban on the 43 items initially restricted from accessing Foreign Exchange (FX).

Recall that the apex bank, on Thursday, lifted the ban on 43 items and announced that importers of the items can now purchase forex from the country’s official market.

Some of the items include rice, cement, margarine, palm kernel, palm oil products, vegetable oils, meat and processed meat products, vegetables and processed vegetable products, poultry, tomatoes/tomato paste, soap, cosmetics, and head pans.

It would be recalled that importers of these items were restricted from purchasing foreign exchange as outlined in the 2015 Circular referenced as TED/FEFPC/GEN/O1/010 and its addendums.

However, with this new policy, importers of such items are now allowed to participate in the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market to buy foreign currency for their transactions.

Reacting to the development in an X post on Friday, Peterside said the financial regulator made the right call to discourage the use of FX policy as a determinant of profitability for importers.

He wrote: “Attacking a problem at the source: CBN is right (See Circular) to discourage the use of FX policy as a determinant of which importer achieves what margin of profitability. That is the role of levies and tariffs.

“FX market exclusions only fuel the parallel market and widen arbitrage.”