Phone dealers in GSM Village at Wuse Zone 1, Abuja  Friday decried the high exchange rate, saying it was negatively affecting their businesses.
Mr Usman Daudu, the Chairman of GSM Village said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
Daudu said: ``we thank God for the business but everybody in the country knows that there is no money for now.
``And this dollar issue is affecting our business and people cannot travel abroad to purchase phones because of high rate of dollar.
``People are afraid to use their money to exchange dollar, what we were selling last year with this new exchange rate is now double the amount we were selling.
Speaking on the issue of stolen phone being sold in the market, the chairman said all their members were registered and doing genuine businesses.
He said that none of their members could sell stolen phones or goods.
Daudu said that all their members had been informed that ``if anybody brings a phone either for exchange or for sale, they must ask that person to bring the receipt and the package of the phone.’’
``We have a taskforce put in place to check members that sell stolen phones and on investigation we find out that most of the people that bring phones for sale are not theirs.
``We take such people to the nearest police station,’’ he said.
Daudu insisted that traders in the market do not sell fake phones.
``We don’t have any fake phone but most of the phones in the market now are not fake but there are more superior phones and cannot be compared with others.
``But the makers of the phones are also trying; we are not selling fake phones.
The Financial Secretary of GSM village, Mr Ahmed Adams said that the market was full of youths ``and the village has a capacity of giving jobs to more than 3000 youths.’’
``The village has a lot of challenges as we don’t have the capacity to go on large scale in terms of finance and infrastructure.
``We want to partner with not only private sector but also with government to key into their programmes financially.
``We need government recognition to make this place a very viable place where youth empowerment will be carried out and this will go a long way to end unemployment in FCT,’’ he said.