The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday, 21^st February 2017, released new guidelines to access Forex for Personal Travel Allowance and School Fees under the new policy. This comes a day after it released a new Forex policy, which it titled “New Policy Actions in the Foreign Exchange Market.”

“In continuation of efforts to increase Foreign Exchange availability in the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market, and the need to ease the difficulties encountered by Nigerians in obtaining funds for some invisible transactions, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has decided to introduce the following measures,” said CBN in the statement.

The CBN also said that it would start the sale of foreign exchange to big banks, merchant banks and small banks on weekly basis. Forex would be sold every Tuesday for Personal Travel Allowance (PTA) and School fees.

The requirement or conditions to be met before a customer can have to access to Forex are as follow:

For Personal Travel Allowance (PTA)

• Applicants shall be eighteen (18) years of age and above

It won’t be sold to people below 18 years of age.

• Applicants/beneficiaries shall be holders of Nigerian Passports

This means that holders of passports other than the Nigerian passport will not be able to access Forex for their trip.

• Applicants shall be account holders in the chosen bank

For instance, if you want to buy Forex from Guaranty Trust Bank plc (GTB) you must be an account holder in the Bank before Forex is sold to you.

• PTA shall only apply to journeys of not less than five (5) hours flight time

This means no Forex for travels to almost all West African countries since the journeys are less than five hours flight time.

• The flight must originate from Nigeria
• Sale of PTA shall be for travel to be undertaken not more than 14 days from the day of the purchase of PTA

This means that Forex can be purchased within 14 days of travel once you have the necessary documents.

• Applicants shall be entitled to $4,000.00 per quarter

You can’t get Forex of more than $4000 in 3 months.

• Applicants shall present verifiable BVNs to their bankers

This can be obtained from your bank and it is advised to get this before you plan to apply in order to avoid delays.

For school fees

• Applications shall be for University Education only

People who have children or ward in Primary/ Secondary schools outside Nigeria will not be able to access Forex.

• Remittances shall be made directly to the University’s account

Cash won’t be paid directly to the customer but to the University’s account.

• Applications shall be for not more than $15,000.00 or its equivalent per term/semester.
• Applicants shall be recognised, parents/guardians
• Applicants shall provide their Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) to their bankers
• Applicants shall present the following:

1. Duly completed form “A”
2. Admission letter from the university
3. Invoice from the university

Apart from releasing these requirements, it was reported that on Tuesday, February 14, 2017, CBN carried out special wholesale intervention forward sales in the interbank Forex market by offering $500 million. Only 23 banks were able to take up $370,810,810.79 to meet the visible and invisible requests of the customers.