The Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) has called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to accord them autonomy to go digital. This is in line with the CBN’s tech reforms for BDCs for rate convergence and ABCON’s various digitization reforms for Bureau de Change operators from 2016 to date. In a statement on Sunday, Aminu Gwadabe, president of ABCON, urged CBN to grant a no-objection approval for the BDCs to fully digitise their operational correspondences.
If granted, he said, this would promote rate convergence, curb volatility in the market, and promote economic growth.
“As a proactive organisation and an umbrella body of CBN, licensed BDCs, and in line with the CBN planned reforms on BDCs for tech compliance, ABCON started various digitisation reforms since 2016 to date for licensed operators,” Gwadabe said.
According to him granting digital autonomy to the operators, would lead to a true market rate discovery and enhance the achievement of the federal government’s harmonised foreign exchange rate policies.
He added that the policy would also promote effective monitoring of BDCs’ transactions for statutory and regulatory requirements.
He said aside providing employment for over 40,000 employees within the sector, digital autonomy for operators would pave the way for transparency, accountability and ease of supervision.
Gwadabe affirmed that ABCON had led its members to achieve rate convergence in the past.
“ABCON as a custodian of regulation and self regulatory organization believes that the BDCs posed the most effective, transparent pass-through effect, and transmission mechanism of the apex bank foreign exchange policies,” he said.
“We have achieved convergence in 2006, 2009 and 2018 to 2020 before the outbreak of COVID 19 in 2020.
“It is in the light of the above that we are calling on the apex bank to grant a no-objection approval on our various correspondences to the apex bank to grant the sub-sector the autonomy to embrace digital payment to the sub-sector to achieve rate convergence.”
