Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) is lobbing the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to sell foreign exchange directly to its members, hoping to bypass the commercial banks as it looks to counter the biting shortage of forex, which it claims threatens thousands of jobs in their factories across the country. MAN, which has about 2,700 members,

proposed weekly auctions of dollars to manufacturing at a recent meeting with the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele in Abuja, according to the Vice President of MAN, Ali Madugu. “We’re calling on the Central Bank to start selling to us directly, hand-to-hand, rather than through the banks,” Madugu, who is also managing director of Kano-based Food processing company, Dala Foods Limited, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

“Some of our member companies will run out of raw materials next month. Without restocking, what will happen? Thousands of jobs are on the line,” he said.

CBN has brought interbank foreign-exchange trading to a halt since February last year in a bid to prevent the naira falling.

The measures have all but pegged the currency at 197-199 per dollar. As dollars have become scarce, the black-market exchange rate has plummeted to 330, while forwards prices suggest the naira will fall to 291 in a year.

The International Monetary Fund estimates the economy grew three per cent in 2016, the slowest pace since 1999.

Manufacturing is in recession, having declined during the first three quarters of the 2015.

President Muhammadu Buhari and Emefiele have said that boosting employment in the manufacturing sector is crucial to reviving economic growth.

“The banks have everybody as their customers,” Madugu said. “They even have people buying dollars for medical bills and school fees. If CBN believes the economy must be diversified and manufacturing boosted, they should allocate directly to us.”

MAN has asked its members what their annual foreign- exchange needs are so that it can give the apex bank an indication of how big the weekly dollar sales would need to be.

In a bid to save the foreign reserves, the Central Bank in January stopped weekly of forex auctions to Bureau de Changes.

The foreign reserve has shed 10 per cent to $27.8 billion in the past year as Brent crude prices have declined one-third to about $39 a barrel.