Only eight (8) banks of the commercial banks in the country have escaped a \u00a0ban placed on banks for withholding foreign exchange to small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).
\nThe ban was approved by Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele on Tuesday
\nMedia reports said \u00a0CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, confirmed the ban adding that the apex bank took the decision against those which were yet to utilize any portion of the funds allocated by the CBN under the SME window, since the inception of the window last month. They will not \u00a0participate in the weekly wholesale spot and forward interventions.
\nHowever, the ban will be lifted immediately any of the affected banks show evidence of significant utilization of the fund.
\nHe said banks that used up their SME funds were allocated all of the $100 million sold at the Tuesday\u2019s wholesale auction.
\nThe banks that escaped the sanction arere Access Bank, Zenith Bank, Fidelity Bank, Diamond Bank, Sterling Bank, Unity Bank, Jaiz Bank and Heritage Bank.
\nReports indicate that all \u00a0the others were slammed for forex infractions
\nCBN took the punitive measured because \u00a0field reports, revealed that only the eight banks sold forex to the SMEs segment since the inception of the new window to facilitate importation of goods and machineries even though CBN made arrangements for them in the Wholesale Intervention window.
\nA source disclosed to journalists: \u201cOf the US$400 million the CBN has allocated to commercial banks in this SME Window, reliable reports indicate that commercial banks have only sold less than 10 percent to small-scale users and traders, a situation that has forced these users to remain in the black market.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Only eight (8) banks of the commercial banks in the country have escaped a \u00a0ban placed on banks for withholding foreign exchange to small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs). The ban was approved by Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele on Tuesday Media reports said \u00a0CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, confirmed the ban adding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}