Bank customers are now unable to
withdraw dollars from their domiciliary accounts amid worsened scarcity
of the currency in the financial services sector, Saturday PUNCH investigation has revealed.
With the situation, business persons and
individuals are complaining that they cannot get dollars from their
banks to do transactions.
Meanwhile, the naira has continued to
depreciate at the parallel market amid mixed reactions to the recent
foreign exchange policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria to stop selling
forex to Bureau de Change operators.
Currently, the naira exchanges at about N300 at the parallel market and trades at about N200 at the official interbank window.
Investigation, however, showed that the
scarcity of dollars has worsened in banks which are therefore under
pressure to meet customers’ foreign exchange demand.
For instance, a Lagos based medical
doctor, Clementina Silas, said she had been unable to withdraw the
amount she needed from her domiciliary account for over 10 days.
Silas said she was told by officials of
her bank to try several of their branches to check if they could come up
with the $1,300 she wanted to withdraw from her account.
Source: Saturday PUNCH