The Central Bank of Nigeria is planning to boost ease of access of dollars for payment of school fees abroad and Personal Travel Allowance (PTA) at N375 to the dollar.
There is around 40% gap between the official interbank rate and that of the parallel market.
The central bank disclosed after a closed-door meeting it held in Lagos on Friday with all chief executive officers of commercial banks as well as other authorized forex dealers in attendance.
According to a ARM source; “For tuition fees, the CBN said it would only cater for those in the universities and the persons involved can only get $15,000 per term and the forex would be wired directly to the school abroad”. And for PTA, “People are entitled to PTA only if their flight(s) is not less than five hours and they are only entitled to $4,000 per quarter”.
The new rate for school fees and PTA would come into effect from Monday.
This move is geared to drastically reduce foreign exchange round-tripping which appears to be one of the factors responsible to the wide gap between the interbank and parallel market forex rates.
The CBN disbursed $2.83 billion to critical sectors of the economy in December and January. However, analysts estimate outstanding dollar demand at around $4 billion.
The CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele chaired the meeting. The naira closes on Friday at 516 to a dollar.
