TVC E, BUSINESS – The Leadership of the Manufacturers association of Nigeria have continued to mount pressure on the Central Bank to consider direct sale of dollars to its members.
If approved, the measure would require the apex bank by-passing the commercial lenders by selling foreign-currency directly to the end users as a last ditch effort to keep the manufacturing firms afloat and safeguard jobs in the system .
The Nation learnt that MAN, which has about 2,700 members, proposed weekly auctions of dollars to manufacturing businesses at a meeting with CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele in Abuja, the capital, during the week of February 22, according to Ali Madugu, a Vice President at the lobby group.
“We’re calling for the central bank to start giving to us directly, hand-to-hand, rather than through the banks,” Madugu, who is also managing director of Kano-based Dala Foods Ltd., a food processor, said in an interview in the northern Nigerian city on March 3. “Some of our member companies will run out of raw materials next month. Without restocking, what will happen? Thousands of jobs are on the line.”
Nigeria, which derives about two-thirds of government revenue from oil, has rationed dollars and brought interbank foreign-exchange trading to a halt since February last year in a bid to prevent the naira falling. The measures have all but pegged the currency at 197-199 per dollar. As dollars have become more scarce, the black-market exchange rate has plummeted to 310, while forwards prices suggest the naira will fall to 291 in a year.
