Follow Us on Google
By Uche Usim and Chinwendu Obienyi
Following the failure of Nigerian commercial banks to issue the mandatory $4000 Business Travel Allocation (BTA) to Nigerian travellers, customers are now calling on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to urgently intervene to address the crisis.
The customers who spoke to Daily Sun at various bank branches across the Lagos metropolis, labelled the crisis as “disgraceful”, stressing they were tired of the way and manner the apex bank had handled the matter since the crisis began
The CBN in its bid to ease the difficulties encountered by Nigerians in obtaining funds for Foreign Exchange (FX) transactions, promised to provide direct additional funding to banks to meet customers needs for Personal and Business Travel, Medical needs, and School fees in 2021.
It said, “Having cleared the historic backlog of matured letters of credit at the inception of the current flexible exchange rate system, the CBN would immediately begin to provide foreign exchange to all commercial banks to meet the needs of both personal travel allowances (PTA) and business travel allowances (BTA) for onward sale to customers.
All banks would receive amounts commensurate with their demand per week, which would be sold to customers who meet usual basic documentary requirements”.
The apex bank further said that given its objective to continuously and vigorously pursue a transparent, liquid, and efficient FX Market, it would neither tolerate unscrupulous actions nor hesitate to bring serious sanctions on offenders, be they banks or their staff.
True to their words, some Nigerian customers who erred were sanctioned and this made others use the bank route to get PTAs, and BTAs.
However, Daily Sun observed that over the past few weeks, bank customers have complained of inability to get BTAs.
When Daily Sun visited some of the new generation banks in Marina and Yaba yesterday to confirm if BTA issuances were ongoing, bank staff revealed that they were not giving out any and refused to speak further on the matter.
An angry bank customer, who pleaded anonymity, said, “The process of getting BTA has been so difficult these days. My bank has been telling me to come back but today I just lost it with the staff there. Everything in Nigeria is just falling day by day. CBN will say its own, banks will say another thing. I just want the CBN to be up and doing because they started this race and they must finish it.”
Another disappointed bank customer, said, “When I got here, I was told that they were not giving BTA for now because they are not getting allocation from the CBN. If this is true, then the “almighty” CBN has derailed in its functions.
