News Express

President Muhammadu Buhari has tasked the National Space Research and Development Agency to effectively utilise the satellite facilities at its disposal towards resolving the critical issues confronting Nigeria, particularly in the areas of security, improved communication, and digital penetration, as well as agriculture. The President expressed a renewed commitment to the space sector, describing...

President Muhammadu Buhari has allocated a three-bedroom flat each to members of the 1994 African Cup of Nations winning squad, 27 years after the federal government made the promise. The President approved the allocations in their states of preference, noting that six players and three technical crews received their houses already. Former Nigerian captain and coach Stephen Keshi, Uche Okafor, Wil...

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has explained why it is important for the Nigerian government to continue to borrow responsibly to fund critical projects in the country. He believes it is not feasible for the government to tax the people further in the face of the present economic situation and the nation’s infrastructure must be developed. The Senate President says the options are really ve...

The Presidency says President Muhammadu Buhari will travel to London, the United Kingdom on Friday. The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, explained that the President’s trip to London was for a scheduled medical follow-up, adding that he would be back in the country during the second week of July. President Buhari’s scheduled trip to London comes almost three m...

Experts Knowledgeable within the electricity production, distribution and management value chain say that full privatisation, as it happened in telecoms in 2001, is the most viable and sustainable solution to Nigeria’s electricity deficit in its economy. T heir expert-opinion stems from the June 2021 World Bank Resilience-through Reforms report on Nigeria Development Update. According to the lates...

Economic and bilateral ties are to top the agenda of discussions between Nigeria and Vietnam when Vice President Yemi Osinbajo undertakes an official visit to the South-East Asian nation later in the year. The country, with a 70 percent ease-of-doing-business ranking as of 2020, is ranked in the developing/emerging country group with a lower-middle-income economy, with the nominal gross domestic p...

Tax experts, analysts, and legal practitioners are now seriously weighing in on the planned deduction of taxes from potential payers’ bank accounts by the Nigerian government through its Federal Inland Revenue Service, with varied responses to this newspaper’s series of inquiries across the country. The system is one of the portions of the Tax Reforms Act 2020, signed into law by President Muhamma...

The outcome of the gathering of the central bank of Nigeria's Monetary Policy Committee which takes place on Monday and Tuesday this week is not particularly expected to present any surprises to economic analysts, especially in the face of concerns over the current twists and turns in the nation’s economy and the need for the committee to thread the delicate path of pro-growth and anti-inflationar...

The consumer Price index report for the month of April 2021 expected to be released this Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics, analysts at Afrinvest Securities have projected that inflation will remain negative in the short-to-medium-term owing to the poor weather condition alongside the farmer-herder crisis, which they say will worsen harvests from the farm in 2021 as the pro-growth focus...

Access Bank and Zenith Bank, two of Nigeria’s leading Tier-1 banks, the former with a recent aggressive foray into the continent with a large acquisitive appetite, are believed to be sitting pretty at the table of talks that majority shareholder in Union Bank, the Bob Diamond controlled Atlas Mara, is intensifying efforts to sell its majority 49.97 per cent stake in the old horse. Union Bank was o...

Nigeria and other countries in Africa offer enormous opportunities if they embark on green growth which is investing in climate-smart crops to build more resilient food systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, and energy transition. The African Development Bank in an optimistic note of enormous opportunities inherent in green growth in Africa’s recovery pathway from its first recession in 25 yea...

Although the non-performing loans ratio of Nigerian banks stands at 6.3 percent, above the prudential benchmark of five percent, Moody’s Investors Service has asserted that banks in Nigeria, as well as those in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, stand exposed to high risks environment as a result of their rising loan portfolios or their continuous lending to environmentally sensiti...

Analysts sampled by Business A.M. have maintained that Nigeria's economic recovery will be moderate as it continues to embrace the new normal despite the country posting an 8-year historical 9.7 per cent quarter on quarter growth in its gross domestic product$443 billion in real terms, which helped to place the country’s GDP growth as the best in the world ahead of China (2.6%), Japan (3%), USA (4...

Nigeria’s rising joblessness rate has continued to add to its worsening misery index and low human capital development, forcing analysts to canvass for functional and structural policy changes to counter the huge unemployment which continues to defy several investment funds, policies, and initiatives by the federal government to curb the excess job losses through support for the economy. The lates...

Economic experts have expressed concerns about the current twist within the Nigerian economic landscape which continues to put the Central Bank of Nigeria Monetary Policy Committee in a tight corner, providing them little room for a rate maneuver as they converge for the second statutory meeting. As the MPC meets Monday and Tuesday to deliberate on a number of indices to helpdecide whether to hold...

Augusto & Co., Nigeria's foremost credit rating agency, is projecting the country’s total output to grow at a rate of 2 per cent in 2021 on the back of the COVID-19 vaccine and the attendant improvement in investor sentiments globally and domestically, relatively higher prices of crude oil and consequently its demand. In its latest report released over the weekend, the agency highlighted that in t...

Data from the Nigerian Communications Commission shows total active internet subscribers in Nigeria declined by 1.95% or 3,004,3 to 151,296,836 in January 2021 from 154,878,203 in December 2020 while broadband penetration steeped to 42.93% from 45.02% in December 2020.Also, Nigeria's Foremost Gas Liquefaction company's incoming $7 billion Train 7, which is the country’s boldest effort in the gas b...

Recent data obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria shows that Nigeria's external reserves have continued a southward downhill climb dropping as much as $1.38 billion on this journey. From $36.52 billion on January 25, 2021, the reserves fell to $35.14 billion exactly amonth later. The decline represents a marginal one per cent over a 30-day watch, but it comesamidst an environment that has witn...

Nigeria's Economy showed resilience in the fourth quarter of 2020, beating the expectations of several economic analysts, including projections by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund by posting a historical 9.7 percent quarter on quarter growth in its gross domestic product in 8 years to N19.55 trillion in real terms. The argument still holds but it could now be that the credit inte...

Nigeria, ranked Africa's Largest Economy, possesses one of the world’s largest varieties of agricultural commodities from which it could earn over $242 billion in the global export market, a viable channel capable of efficiently bolstering the country’s revenue generation; but the country is woefully failing to effectively tap into this revenue source because of a largely uncoordinated and nonstra...

The Central bank of Nigeria has decided to go hawkish in the controversial global disagreement between some central bankers and market participants over what status to confer on digital currency trading and exchanges. On Friday, it joined forces with a swathe of these central bankers who have remainedlargely sceptical about the invisible money that has swept through the world, exceptperhaps in Rus...

Zenith Bank’s ranks top performer with Tier-1 capital up 18% to $2bn while south Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria lead continent’s top 10 banksNigerian banks have dominated the west and central African regional Rankings in the 2020 survey of Africa’s top 100 lenders conducted by African Business, with the overall result showing just a few surprises. Data captured mostly full financial result as at...

We take a look at the business overview for the week starting from the MPC meeting, the International Monetary Fund prediction of the sub-Saharan Africa’s policymakers facing a difficult road to economic recovery.

The president of the African development bank, Akinwumi Adesina, has stated that profit shifting, base erosion and tax avoidance by multinational corporations form a huge part of Africa’s missing taxes and they account for a large share of the over $60 billion in illicit capital flows that Africa loses annually. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will hold its...

Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy with a GDP size of over $475 billion, would require at least $4 billion annually to be able to provide universal access to sustainable renewable energy for its citizens, the minister of state for power. Goddy Jedy Agba at a UN hosted virtual global power sector players’ conference said with the total removal of petrol subsidy by the current administration, renewab...