President Muhammadu Buhari is said to have forwarded Godwin
Emefiele’s name to the National Assembly for reappointment as Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) Governor.
Godwin Emefiele who is the 11th CBN Governor began his
five-year tenure on June 3, 2014, which will come to an end in less than a month.
Emefiele became the governor at a time when there was
visible pressure on the Naira as well as a decline in the country’s foreign
reserves.
At his maiden news conference as governor, he harped on the
vision of building a people-focused central bank that would deliver effective
price and financial system stability as well as promote sustainable economic
development.
Over the course of five years, Emefiele introduced policies
which many economic experts have criticised, while many others hailed the policies.
Some of the major policies undertaken by the apex bank in
the last five years include the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) which aims at
increasing the country’s local food production and conserving the foreign
reserves.
The CBN took the decision to also ban 41 items from
accessing foreign exchange through official routes to encourage local
production of the items and simultaneously conserve the nation’s depleting
foreign reserves.
Since then, the CBN has raised the number of items affected
on the list to 43, with the inclusion of fertiliser and textile products.
Some of the items not valid for foreign exchange at the
Nigerian window include rice, cement, margarine, palm produce, beef,
vegetables, poultry and eggs, private airplanes, wooden doors and Iron rods,
among others.
The CBN also introduced the multiple foreign exchange
system, which led to the creation of the Inter-bank/Wholesale, Invisible, Small
& Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and the Investors/Exporters’ windows.
Also, in 2018, the CBN signed a bilateral currency swap
agreement with the People’s Republic of China worth about 2.5 billion dollars.
The Currency Swap Agreement is designed to aid trade
transactions between China and Nigeria and remove the need to first source for
U.S. Dollars before payments for transactions involving the two countries.
The CBN through the Banker’ Committee and in collaboration
with all banks in Nigeria also inaugurated a centralised biometric
identification system for the banking industry tagged: “Bank Verification
Number (BVN)”. (NAN)
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