News Express

The Ongoing Geopolitical Crisis in Europe has resulted in supply disruptions of various commodities, exacerbated inflation on a global scale, and resulted in multi-year high valuations of goods in the global market at a period the global community is beginning to recover from the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The war, which began on February 24 when Russia launched its first of many a...

The Nigerian economy, which had in recent times wobbled under inflationary pressure, was dealt yet another blow as inflation figures soared to an 11-month high, further tightening the purchasing power of the populace, according to the Consumer Price Index data, which measures the average change over time in the prices of basic consumer goods and services. The latest CPI report from the National Bu...

Nigeria along with other African oil and gas producing countries are under mounting pressures over a global energy transition that is at once in acceleration, says a new report from the global consulting firm, McKinsey and Company. The report says most of the countries affected, including Nigeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan, Ghana, Libya, and Algeria, among others, are exposed to the g...

The Covid-19 Pandemic, which hit the global economy ‘below the belt’, with the latter losing $12.5 trillion says IMF revised forecast, did not, however, undo account-able budgeting practices worldwide, according to a new survey by the International Budget Partnership (IBP), which it unveiled in its latest open budget survey (OBS) for 120 countries. Most countries preserved accountable spending pra...

Could the weak macroeconomic fundamentals, runaway inflation and the constraints of the CBN to sustain a dovish stance, due to the external dynamics in operation, bring about a recession in Nigeria? Almost six years after the CBN (July 2016), the monetary policy committee (MPC) raised policy rates by 200 basis points to 14 per cent, and it has again raised the policy rate by a high 150 basis point...

Members Of The Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria will head into their meeting Monday and Tuesday knowing that for the first time in a long while Nigeria’s April inflation number served them à la carte ahead of their gathering. Inflation is the new kid on the block. It is the talk of the town across many serious capital cities, across many central banks, not least the United...

Household Consumption is still the major demand driver of the 3.4% year-on-year real GDP growth recorded by Nigeria in 2021, a detailed analysis of the report released by the National Bureau of Statistics has shown. Indeed, the sector’s expenditure grew 19.36% and 7.3% in real terms during the third and fourth quarters of the year respectively, according to the GDP by expenditure approach for both...

Nigeria’s Efforts, including a number of actions taken by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to attract an inflow of foreign exchange into the country appear to be running against the tides as data are seen and analyses by Business A.M. show that direct remittances into the country have been on a downward journey. In one glaring instance, the country’s total direct remittances crashed by as much a...

Do it yourself (DIY) investors around the world have taken heightened interest with a responsive upswing in their sentiments in trading commodities such as gold, natural gas and oil on trading platforms since the February 24 invasion of Ukraine by Russia. As a result of this strengthening of investors’ sentiment, global retail client participation in commodities across trading platforms climbed by...

The move by the President Muhammadu Buhari's government to spend N4 trillion on petroleum products subsidy payment, a payment he described as a ruse when he was on the campaign soapbox before he became president in 2015, continues to receive knocks and has now been labelled as having ‘significant negatives’ for Nigeria, its people and its economy. The knocks for this non-productive but humongous e...

The global surge in food prices is taking a toll on emerging and developing economies and Nigerians now deploy over 56 per cent of their total spending on food as food inflation in the country heads to 18 per cent after printing 17.20 per cent year on year in March 2022, current figures from the National Bureau of Statistics shows. Average commodity prices in Nigeria rose by almost 127 per cent be...

Nigeria’s debt service cost is putting severe pressures on the purse carrying its revenue, which continues to dwindle. This is happening at a time when many indices show an economy that is worse for wear, with external reserves below $40 billion, the Naira weakening daily against the United States dollar, both at the parallel and the investors and exporters’ segments of the FX market, an inability...

The pictures that have been coming out of the Nigerian economy and its investment climate in the last two weeks have left many local and international analysts worried about what they consider to be the deepening of the uncertainties that have surrounded Africa’s largest economy by gross domestic product and market size, as well as by population numbers, for nearly a decade. Caught up in the curre...

When the crisis finally settles, if indeed, it does, between Russia and Ukraine, analysts say there would be a lot of rebalancing to follow, in Europe and then globally. That rebalancing is already on somewhat. The world has been rudely awakened in just a little over a month to the realisation that it is dependent on the Russian-Ukrainian axis for so many things. Europe’s wholesome dependence on R...

Well over 48 hours after the Court of Appeal, Owerri Division ordered global oil giant, Shell, along with its Nigerian alter ego, Shell PetroleuOim Development Company, to deposit with the court a judgement debt of N800 billion awarded in 2020 for oil spill and environment spoilage, and failing to carry out the order of the court, lawyers to the judgement creditors have returned to the court with...

Away from pandemic induced effects and the pressures from Covid-19, the lingering Russia-Ukrainian watershed, yet to exert an immediate impact on Nigeria’s economy, is likely to have significant effects in the coming weeks and months as the conflict continues to worsen global supply disruptions, pushing prices of commodities higher than expected. Even worse, Nigeria continues to be buffeted by cur...

In what looks like they are out of their depth, Nigerian policy hunches, particularly on the fiscal side of the equation. have been caught off guard as international crude oil prices continue to rally while the country’s external reserves take a tumble. A number of analysts say it the short view approach to policy cooking, as well as its eating, take that for implementation, where the long view th...

Crude oil revenue, The Nigerian government’s major source of revenue and foreign exchange earnings, appear to be facing serious underlying setbacks despite a positive rally in global oil prices to $100 per barrel, and well ahead of the 2022 federal government’s budget benchmark of $62 per barrel. With the naira still exchanging at the rate of N410.50 to the dollar, the government’s fiscal managers...

Governor Godwin Emefiele, Central Bank of Nigeria honcho, simply gave it away as, perhaps, one of his many adventures in the fiscal policy space, when he announced another leg in the dogged pursuit of his chosen role as a ‘development’ central banker, the RT200 FX Programme, designed to see Nigeria accrete $200 billion within three to five years from non-oil exports

A total of $506 Million was generated as investment banking fees across sub-Saharan Africa in 2021, A report on investment banking performance by Refinitiv Deals Intelligence, a subsidiary of the LSEG’s (London Stock Exchange Group) Data & Analytics division, has revealed. The just over half a billion dollars generated last year was still 8% down on the figure recorded for 2020 and is the lowest g...

The Prices of major grain commodities in Nigeria will experience a bullish trend this year driven by the carry-on effect of the inflationary pressure on food prices that marked 2021, says AFEX, a leading commodities market player, in its annual commodities outlook report for the 2022 crop production and market year. The report titled, “Annual Commodities Review & 2022 Outlook,” asserted that the c...

Has the December inflation upswing presented a headroom for the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Monetary Policy Committee to manoeuvre on rates? One of the words out there is that there is a strong possibility that a rate tightening measure could be something the wise men and women would pull out of their shared magician hat on Tuesday, January 25, 2022, at the conclusion of the first Monetary Policy Co...

Projection by leading African and Nigeria based credit rating agency, Agusto & Co, of huge potential foreign exchange inflows into Nigeria, appears to expose a serious lacuna in the management of the inflows and the economy by both fiscal and monetary authorities. Agusto & Co will provide fuller details and explanations on its key projections on the economy for 2022 on Thursday, but in an advanced...

Nigeria is desperate for revenue. Its treasury does not have plenty of cash to provide for all its needs. The country is already highly geared on borrowing, both domestic and foreign, with also a high ‘ways and means’ exposure with the Central Bank of Nigeria which is unaccounted for in the debt profile released by the Debt Management Office. Nigeria has been running deficit budgets for years and...

An Official public debt pile-up by federal and state governments that has raced to N38.01 trillion at the last time of counting by the Debt Management Office is being described as a knee on the necks of Nigerians in the lead up to 2022, the undoubtedly lame-duck year of the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency, when all attention is expected to be focused on the soapbox and politicians hold sway, jostling,...