The House of Representatives has asked the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to appear before its committee on Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, SMEs to explain the recent cancellation of about $2.4 billion worth of forward contracts sold to manufacturers on the grounds of incomplete import documents.
The resolution followed a motion of urgent public importance sponsored by a member from Adamawa state, Zakaria Nyamkpa at Plenary in Abuja
The House also resolved to investigate the cancellation and examine documents of affected companies with the view to identifying genuine companies with legitimate transactions.
Nyamkpa noted that the CBN recently announced the invalidation of about $2.4 billion worth of forward contracts sold to manufacturers on the grounds of incomplete Import documents.
He said the invalidated forward contracts were originally entered into about a year ago between various Nigerian manufacturing companies and the CBN to guard against currency fluctuations and risks associated with the exchange rates.
“having entered into these agreements, affected companies ’bank accounts debited in Naira equivalents and letters of credit issued by the participating commercial banks, the Central Bark of Nigeria decided to dishonour the contractual obligations and cancelled the transactions, one year later.”
He alleged that this cancellation of forward contracts was coming at a time of worsening national economic challenges such as galloping inflation, unemployment, increased poverty level, and hardship.
The Lawmaker expressed fear that if sustained, the cancellation of the said transactions will cause widespread collapse of small and medium companies and the exit from the country of large corporations with all the attendant consequences thereof.
Oduyemi Odumade, Edited By Grace Namiji
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