The Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) has advised the Federal Government to ban Binance from operations in the country, alleging that the company is partly responsible for the depreciating value of the Naira in the FX market.
Binance is a global online FX platform that avails users the opportunity to trade in cryptocurrencies on a daily basis.
The National President of the association, Alhaji Aminu Gwadebe, was quoted as giving this advice during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Lagos.
Describing Binance trading as gradually becoming the anchorage of the Investor and Exporters (I&E) window and the parallel market, the FX expert noted that the Binance exchange is the most liquid market with 1.2 million transactions per second.
The ABCON President explained: “If you know about Binance, you will know that Binance trading is becoming the anchorage of both the investors and exporters window and the parallel market, which is unfortunate.
“So, we have to do something that can stop Binance. It’s a competition; we need to ban Binance and the only way to do so is if you have liquidity.
“As I speak, Binance is the most liquid market; they do 1.2 million transactions per second. So, it is a very liquid market but that is not a scary status, we can break it through our local content and peculiarities”, Gwadabe added.
According to him, the initial optimism of BDC operators in the FX market is gradually fizzling as dealers are becoming pessimistic about the market situation as investors are not coming, thereby putting pressure on the local currency since the unification of the FX rate by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) a few weeks ago.
Gwadabe further elaborated: “We are seeing a scenario where optimism is giving way to pessimism; investors are not coming, Nigerians don’t have confidence in the market and we have to look for external finances that are coming in as a quick fix.
“There is a lot of pressure on the Naira, from foreign exchange hoarding by the banks and oil companies.
”Is it Nigerians that want to pay school fees, round-tripping, speculations, among others. All these galvanised to put pressure on the Naira.
“Spike and volatility did not start now, it’s something the present government inherited and has gone a long way in checkmating illegal behaviours around foreign exchange market and that is the objective of the unification”, the ABCON leader added.
Gwadabe expressed hope that following the fuel subsidy removal, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) would be able to remit funds to the federation accounts as against the situation in the past when it was difficult for it to do so.
