Operators of licensed Bureau De Change (BDC) all over Nigeria are fighting to remain in business as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) keeps back dollars.
Assignments put the retail forex market in great trouble. Many traders claim they are only barely able to cover their daily operating expenses, including rent, salaries, and regulatory levies; some are already closing their businesses.
The News Chronicle gathered that many authorized operators have to depend only on walk-in consumers exchanging modest amounts of foreign currency because the CBN stopped dollar sales to BDCs. They claim that this disorganized strategy is unsustainable and risks destroying a once crucial connection between formal and informal currency exchanges.
BDC operators claim exclusion from the official foreign exchange window and suspension of dollar appropriations first stopped in causes their issues. Over worries of illegal financial flows in 2021.
Though the CBN restarted sales briefly in February 2024 following the revocation of almost 4,000 licenses for regulatory infractions, the relief was fleeting as the top bank once more pulled support without justification.
Most operators are “just surviving,” Abubakar Ardo, a forex trader, told reporters, noting that consumer demand has also plummeted dramatically as people are increasingly inclined to employ online transfers and international money transfer firms (IMTOs).
He said that though the move toward digital transactions may stabilize the naira, many conventional currency dealers have lost a feasible business model.
Emphasizing that the sector was “on the verge of extinction,” President of the Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON), Aminu Gwadabe Many members cannot now cover overhead expenditures. Still, he affirmed that talks with the CBN are still in process to bring BDCs back into the official foreign exchange market.
Observers in the business think that reinstating BDCs into the official system might increase liquidity, stabilize exchange rates, and rebuild trust among small-scale foreign exchange traders, many of whom view this as their final opportunity to live.
