Tope Fasua, the special adviser to President Bola Tinubu on economic affairs, has called for a structural reform of Nigeria’s foreign exchange market.

Mr Fasua said this at a roundtable themed ‘Unification of Foreign Exchange and the Effect of Fuel Subsidy Removal on the Business Community’ organised by the National Policy Advocacy Centre (NPAC) of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) on Tuesday in Abuja.

“I believe we should reform the bureau de change (BDC) sector and make it stronger. You cannot manage over 5,000 BDCs selling money on the streets,” the presidential adviser explained. “If we can do the structural reforms in the BDCs sector and the banks and supervise them well, the CBN, with our reserves, can incentivise that sector, allowing people to get money much quicker.”

Mr Fasua added, “And you have to define the illegal market, and by then, we will be able to find stability,” noting that Nigeria spends over $45 billion annually importing refined petroleum products, milk, chemicals and fish.

“I hear things like scarcity of forex. What is scarcity of forex, as if the world owes us any forex? The world does not owe us any forex. The forex you get is depending on the trade that you do,” Mr Fasua stated. “If you look at Nigeria’s import and export profile, over 20 items that we import in Nigeria are in the billions of dollar range. Our biggest import, fuel and diesel, take about $25 billion to $30 billion every year.”

The presidential adviser added, “We have things like cars, which is about four billion every year; sugar, fish, milk one billion each; wheat, four billion; chemicals, three billion dollars; pharmaceuticals, two billion dollars.” 

Mr Fasua listed crude oil and fertiliser as two things Nigeria exports in the billion-dollar range.

“The first is petroleum and gas; you will see a figure like $57 billion, but out of that, only 30 per cent is ours, according to Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI),” the presidential adviser on economic affairs. “The international oil companies that have the technology that do production own most of that money.”

(NAN)