Forex: CBN Approves $20,000 For SMEs
CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele [/caption]
The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, on Monday, approved the sum $20,000 per quarter for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, CBN, Mr. Isaac Okorafor made the announcement yesterday in Abuja.
According to Okorofor, the intervention was necessitated by its findings that a large number of SMEs were being crowded out of the foreign exchange space by large firms.
He explained that this special offer will enable SMEs import eligible finished and semi-finished items not exceeding $20,000 per quarter.
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“Under the special arrangement, enterprises with employee strength of between 10 to 199 and asset base of between N5 million to less than N500 million will be offered the opportunity to import eligible items within the approved threshold,” he said.
Okorafor further disclosed that the bank had begun the massive sale of foreign exchange in different sectors of the forex market this week.
Yesterday, the bank intervened by offering $100 million to authorized dealers at the forex auction in the interbank wholesale window. The bank also sold $10,000 each to BDCs to meet the needs of low-end users in the country.
