Bureaux De Change (BDC) directors have reiterated their commitment to ensuring stable exchange rate in the country.
This was part of the resolutions made at the end of a meeting of BDC Directors organised by the Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) in Lagos.
ABCON President, Aminu Gwadabe charged the directors to protect the huge money invested in their care by ensuring their staff members operate within the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) guidelines.
He said this had become imperative to protect the BDC business, especially the weekly dollar sale by the apex bank.
Noting that the investment in each BDC is about N35 million, he called for increased supervision by directors, to detect and forestall any activity that could lead to the loss of such investment.
Listing the expected roles of BDC directors, Chairman Southwest Zone, ABCON, Taiwo Ebenezer, said directors should be involved in the activities of their BDCs and relate regularly with their staff members.
Among other things, he added that BDC directors must know the sources of funds paid into their corporate accounts, while also ensuring weekly operational reports from their staff.
ABCON National Treasurer, Gbadamosi Mohammed, said it is the duty of directors to educate their members on the ethics of the business as indicated in the CBN guidelines.
He added that the ABCON training was informed by the need to ensure that BDC staff members were educated, and that the directors should ensure application of lessons from the training by their staff in the running of their BDCs.
Also, ABCON Vice President, Azubuike Igbokwe listed unauthorised transactions for BDCs to include, funds transfer, donations to political parties, funding of importation and funding of terrorism activities.
Noting that the penalty for unauthorised transactions include N5 million fine, exclusion from forex bidding or revocation of licences, he charged the directors to validate the Bank Verification Number (BVN) of their customers to ensure that their identity and activities as a way of ensuring their BDCs were not used for any unauthorised transactions.
The directors also expressed support for the proposed ABCON Task Force Committee on monitoring compliance by operators.
While observing that the guidelines for BDC operations required that BDCs operate in their registered offices, the directors charged ABCON to punish any operator that contravened the guidelines of CBN.
The directors said they were committed to increased supervision of BDCs’ operations while ensuring adequate remuneration for staff and prompt rendition of returns to the regulatory authorities.
– The Nation