Financial experts in the country have allayed the fears that the Central Bank of Nigeria could consider converting dollars in domiciliary accounts of banks held on behalf of depositors into naira following the recent ban on the sale of forex to the BDCs by the apex bank over accusations of fraud and arbitrage.
The fear, it was gathered, is based on concerns that the CBN might in an act of desperation choose to convert some of the balances to address Nigeria’s foreign currency supply shortages.
According to Wale Okunrinboye, Head of Research at Sigma Pensions, the last country that did this was Argentina and it resulted in a catastrophic deterioration in its currency crisis. He maintained that the CBN was not that desperate to carry out such an action.
Another analyst who was on the show, Dele Akintola, opined this was not in any way under consideration and that the laws and regulations that guides ownership of domiciliary accounts cannot be changed easily by the Central Bank.
