BEVERLY HILLS, November 24, (THEWILL) – The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Godwin Emefiele, said on Tuesday that all Nigerian banks were adequately capitalised, debunking recent reports that some three banks did not meet the minimum 10 percent capital adequacy ratio and had been asked to recapitalise.
“This has been a subject of some topical discussions in the press, and let me seize this opportunity to confirm that there is no bank that has capital adequacy problem today.
“And all the news around is all false, and let me explain that the Central Bank has its own internal mechanism with which it conducts daily stress testing of the operations and activities of banks,” he said.
This comes as Emefiele also explained that its foreign exchange control policy had been largely successful, particularly in helping spur appetite of foreign investors to explore opportunities in the largely import dependent country.
“Some companies that were importing items from outside the country before now have started considering shipping their machines here so that they can begin to produce those things in Nigeria,” Emefiele stated on the success of the FX controls that had generated wide debates.
“We have had cases, for instance, a company that deals in aluminium cans from which those manufacturing drink were importing from, whereas there is a company that produces these cans but was not being patronised.
“But immediately we said that the importation of those cans have been restricted from accessing foreign exchange, the drink manufacturers are now buying the cans from the Nigerian company, and that has created jobs and led to improvement in productivity. That is what we want,” he said.
Meanwhile, there are recent reports that the apex bank had given three commercial banks until June 2016 to recapitalise after they failed to meet the minimum Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) of 10 percent.
The reports alleged that Liquidity Stress Test conducted by the CBN showed the Capital Adequacy Ratios (CARs) of the affected banks were below 5 percent regulatory threshold – even though the three banks are not among the domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs), it said.
Speaking on the issue, Emefiele noted that this report was not true and that the routine stress test of the CBN had not indicted any of the banks.
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