FX Reforms Have Ended Dollar Lobbying at CBN – BUA Chairman

Chairman of BUA Cement Plc, Abdul Samad Rabiu, has said the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) foreign exchange reforms have ended the era of lobbying for dollars.

Rabiu disclosed this in Abuja during a media briefing after the company’s 9th Annual General Meeting, saying the new FX framework has brought transparency and fairness to currency access.

“I was making a joke a few weeks ago that I’ve only seen the current CBN Governor maybe twice since his appointment. That’s because I don’t need him. Before now, I used to visit the CBN every two weeks to lobby for FX. That was the only way to survive,” he said.

He described the previous regime as a distortion that created artificial scarcity, noting that the official rate was N500 or N600 but businesses could not access it.

“The rate was N500 or N600 officially, but nobody could get it. On the street, it was closer to N1,000. It was an artificial rate,” he said.

Rabiu praised the current reforms for unifying the market and closing the gap between official and parallel rates.

“Now, the rate you get is what everyone else gets. You go to the bank, you get FX at the market rate,” he said, adding that it has created a level playing field for businesses.

He projected that the naira would continue to strengthen to around N1,200 per dollar, down from nearly N2,000 earlier in the year, and that the stronger currency was already easing prices of commodities including cement and food.

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