Nigeria’s forex traders set up platform for live countrywide market exchange rates

By Charles Abuede 

• com to provide authentic rates

The Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) has launched a realtime exchange rates platform, Naijabdcs.com, to provide authentic and live foreign exchange rates across the country based on market realities.

This information was made known by Aminu Gwadabe, the association’s president on Tuesday during a virtual symposium tagged: ‘THE NAIRA IN 2021: Optimising Choices for Growth’, organized to discuss the outlook for the Nigerian Naira in 2021 and monitored by Business A.M.

According to the ABCON president, Nigerians will stand the chance to gain so much through the use of the platform as they will be empowered with on the go rates as it is live. He said the app is different from other apps or platforms we know of to be full of speculative rates from the market and which are not particularly based on market realities.

“We all know that the Bureau De Change Operators are strategic partners in exchange rates management in Nigeria. So, the introduction of this platform, Naijabdcs.com, will help to enhance the provision of authentic and live foreign exchange rates across the country based on market realities. This is our own way of adding value to the market and also encourage innovations within the financial services sector and in the country,” Gwadabe said.

The platform, as presented by the association president, allows stakeholders and traders stay on top of the foreign exchange market latest happenings and access real-time currency updates, from Western Union rates to CBN exchange rates and bank ATM rates.

Also, the ABCON boss also said that the platform houses the full information of over 2,500 licenced BDC operators who are licenced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Meanwhile, Gwadabe, in his presentations at the virtual symposium held via zoom and organised by Arbiterz Media Limited, in association with EGM trading partners, said that the Nigerian local currency has been facing a war of repatriation and sabotage since 1986 when the structural adjustment programme (SAP) was implemented.

“There are lots of sabotages in the sector but the apex bank is already introducing policies to curtail sabotages and also balance the level of demand majeure with the supply majeure,” he stated.

He, however, revealed that the preparation of our mindset and readiness will go a long way in helping more outflows of Nigerian naira in the right direction and proper inflow of foreign portfolios as CBN hopes to improve liquidity in the market while the naira’s fair value will be the cost of speculation.