Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, has said that with the exception of five institutions, foreign exchange backlogs have been resolved.
Cardoso stated this on Thursday during an investor call that was organised by the Nigerian Exchange Group. He also promised to resolve the remaining foreign exchange backlogs at the banks in the coming days.
He said. “Essentially, what we have done with those is that we have paid as much as we can to the point where we have cleared the backlog of all the banks save five. With the exception of five, all banks’ legitimate and provable backlogs have been cleared.
“We are confident that we will shortly be in a position where the whole issue of forwards would be behind us. I would say in the next few days we should be in a position where the balance of the five would have been put behind us.
“I have tried as much as possible to be consistent on this matter. I don’t make promises I don’t fulfil. The last time I spoke on this matter, I was confident that within one month, we would be more or less out of it and I’m saying again that right now, I think in the course of the next few days maybe a week and a half, this should be put behind us.”
The CBN boss also said that foreign portfolio transfers to Nigeria this year stood at $2 billion.
Nigeria saw $3 billion in foreign portfolio transfers in 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
In a February interview, Cardoso said that of the $7 billion foreign exchange backlog he faced upon taking office, demands made without import documents and requests from non-existent groups accounted for almost $2.4 billion, among other infractions.
He said, “We discovered that of the roughly $7bn, about $2.4bn had issues. We believed that they had no business being there. The infractions ranged from so many things. For example, not having valid import documents and in some cases entities that did not exist and in some cases, account parties who had asked for foreign exchange and got more than they asked for and some that didn’t even ask for any and got. There were a whole load of infractions there. “
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