The Central Bank of Nigeria has been accused of making policies that contradicts existing trade policies. The Centre for the Promotion of Public Enterprises stated this and urged the Federal Government to call the apex bank to order.
Muda Yusuf, the Chief Executive Officer of CPPE made the appeal in a document titled, ‘2022 Fiscal Policy Measures: Upside and Downside’.
The Central Bank under its Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele began a campaign of excluding items from accessing forex in 2015 when 41 items were blacklisted.
Advertisement
“The implementation of the policy will help conserve foreign reserves as well facilitate the resuscitation of domestic industries,” the CBN had said in a 2015 circular.
In April 2021, the bank said it will ban importers of wheat and sugar from accessing foreign exchange.
Fertilizer and maize imports have also been blacklisted from accessing foreign exchange from the official forex market.
“We appeal to the federal government to intervene to resolve the conflict, contradictions and confusion currently existing in the trade policy space regarding the import prohibition list and the CBN Forex exclusion list,” said Yusuf adding “The lists are conflicting and disrupting trade.”
Last year, the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, called out the governor over what he described as poor forex policy management.
The CPPE boss said some of the prohibitions is making importers to battle with two conflicting trade policies formulated by the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank.
He said, ” There are many items that are on the Forex exclusion list of the CBN which are not prohibited from importation under the extant fiscal policy of government.
“It is untidy to have what we can describe as two sets of trade policy document. One by the Central Bank of Nigeria, and the other by the Federal Ministry of Finance.
“The presidency should reconcile these two lists in order to resolve the current policy conflict in our international trade ecosystem and minimize disruption to trade.
“We should not have a situation where an item that is not prohibited under our fiscal policy and being denied access to Form M by the Central Bank of Nigeria.”