By Chris Agabi
The Association of Bureaux de Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) has applied to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for approval to go digital with its foreign exchange rates real time.
The President of the Association Alh. Aminu Mohammed Gwadabe told Economy Footprint on Sunday that the initiative is in line with its new reforms and to help unify the exchange rate between the official exchange rate and the BDCs.
He noted that “There is no doubt that exchange rate volatility have continued to underpinned the slow economic growth of Nigeria in the past years.”
He said ABCON as a “proactive organisation and an umbrella body of Central Bank licensed BDCs and In line with the recent CBN planned reforms on BDCs to be tech savvy and ABCON’s BDCs various digitization reforms since 2016 to date, we urge the CBN to democratized and centralized the BDCs operational mechanism by allowing BDCs the autonomy to go digital.”
“In view of the above we called on the CBN to diversify our scope of operation and business model from cash base to less cash and digital platforms” he said.
According to Gwadabe ABCON vision for BDCs digitization through their exchange rate platform (nsijabdcs.com)unveiling in 2018 has long prepared their members to embrace technology.
“It is also important to note that ABCON have spent several millions in IT research and development ,designs, implementations of various layers of automation of the business transformation process from manual to digital” he said.
“Our members have through automation now have transactions monitoring systems with installed IT office equipments and internet in their location” he assured.
According to him, his members now record their transaction on icloud real time and extract their daily reports for return rendition online real time interface with the CBN
He also stated that ABCON members in 2019 integrated with NIBSS clients BVN verification and validation platform in carrying out their transactions with their members.
He also said the BDCs through the collaborations of ABCON and NFIU registered on the GoAML platforms and Nil-returns platform for the rendition of their suspicious and cash transactions threshold to the NFIU in compliance with their AML/CFT obligations.
He said ABCON as a custodian of regulation and self regulatory organization believed that the BDCs poses the most effective, transparent pass through effect and transmission mechanism of the apex bank foreign exchange policies.We have achieved convergence in 2006, 2009 and 2018 to 2020 before the outbreak of COVID 19 in 2020.
Alh. Gwadabe also said that “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.
He said the benefits of the grant of the autonomy will includes not limited to the following:
“First, it will lead to a true market rate discovery.
“Secondly, it will enhance the achievement of the federal Government harmonized foreign exchange rate policies.
“Thirdly, will make the BDCs transactions monitoring system effective and in conforming with their compliance obligation to statutory and regulatory requirement.
Fifth, it will harmonized and centralized the market and thus making the BDCs the moderating and correcting mechanism for the market.
In the same vein it will create additional employment to the over 40,000 employees direct and indirect in the BDCs sub sector
Finally, it will usher in Transparency, accountability and ease of supervision.”
