Published on Tuesday, 19 August 2014 05:00Written by Kayode Ekundayo

The newly introduced outbound money transfer by the apex regulatory body, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), will strangulate the operation of bureau de change operations in the country, the President of the Association of Bureau de Change Operators in Nigeria (ABCON), Alhaji Aminu Gwadabe, has said.

Outbound remittance service allows consumers to send funds in minutes via Western Union around the world. Before now, consumers in the country had only been able to receive funds via the service.

Under the new service, users are allowed a maximum of $2,000 per transaction. According to the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, providing alternative channel of foreign exchange transfer to serve the needs of small foreign exchange end users will simultaneously reduce the amount of foreign exchange sourced from official forex window in the country as well as help conserve foreign exchange.

With the latest initiative, the CBN boss said users do not need to go to a bank or bureau de change (BDCs) to buy foreign currency in order to transfer money abroad.

But, Gwadabe said: “Caution should be taken on the recent launch of outbound money transfer by the CBN. We view this as another strategy of strangulating the BDCs sector by removing their retail businesses to the mighty banks. However, we believe the CBN governor will fulfill his promise of making the BDCs an integral part of the money transfer project because our sector has contributed over N100bn to the coffers at a 3 percent saving interest.”

Emefiele had promised to involve the BDCs in the new deal, saying the CBN is ready to provide up to N10m of the mandatory deposits of BDCs with the apex bank to Western Union as guarantee for its transactions with qualified BDCs.

http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/daily/business/31986-forex-dealers-oppose-outbound-money-transfer

Eldavido1: If the policy is not favourable to you, change business! Some few group of vested interest cant just hold Nigeria and its economy to ransom.

Eldavido1: If the policy is not favourable to you, change business! Some few group of vested interest cant just hold Nigeria and its economy to ransom.

Sincere9gerian:
The good news is that the new CBN governor no send dem