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The Chair of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, says the Federal Government is planning to introduce new foreign exchange rules — including a crackdown on illegal currency trading by end of 2023.
According to him, it is hoped that the move will result in the naira closing its more-than-45% gap with the unofficial rate and reaching a “fair price” by year-end.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Oyedele said the government plans to clear a backlog of dollar demand estimated at about $6.7 billion, bolster the naira forward market, and set transparent rules for the operations of the official market.
Oyedele, a former Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), said, “We think all of that will happen by December, and may be in a matter of a couple of weeks we will begin to see the results, such that before the end of the calendar year, naira should find its true value, not the one that is being done currently in the parallel market.”
Oyedele said the government sees a “fair price” for the dollar at “N650 to N750”.
He said the divergence between the official and parallel market rates “means you are sucking liquidity and supply from the official market to the parallel market because everyone wants the premium”.
