Nigeria Economy news

The National Pension Commission said it had released N86.7 billion to sacked workers of various companies who participated in the Contributory Pension Scheme.
Acting Director-General, PenCom, Mrs Aisha Dahir-Umar, who disclosed this on Monday in Lagos, said the amount was for the settlement of 275,172 disengaged workers.
She said the figure represented the total paid from 2004, when the CPS came into effect, to June 2018.
Dahir-Umar also said the amount was about one per cent of the N8.23 trilli

Louis Ibah
As Director of Electronics and Engineering Services for the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Mr. Farouk Umar, supervises the operations of Nigeria’s Total Radar Coverage (TRACON) project.
Umar’s responsibility involves is keeping a close eye on the technical and safety operations of the multi-billion naira project and ensuring that nothing goes wrong that could compromise the facility and pose harm to flight safety.
The history of TRACON dates to 2003, when the

Activities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange on Monday maintained the downward trend with the market capitalisation shedding N46 billion due to profit taking by investors.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the market capitalisation lost N46 billion or 0.39 per cent to close at N11.756 trillion from the N11.802 trillion achieved on Friday.
The All-Shares Index, which opened at 32,327.59, also dropped 125.61 points or 0.39 per cent to close at 32,201.98 following price losses by some blue chips

Chinwendu Obienyi
Following a subsisting order from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Africa’s telecommunication giant, MTN to repatriate the $8.1 billion allegedly remitted abroad, experts have urged the Federal Government to exercise caution and tact in dealing with the situation.
The financial experts who made their views known in separate interviews with Daily Sun also called on the government to set up an independent panel to investigate the issue with the right group of individual

Chinyere Anyanwu
The Federal Government, under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, had in 2003 banned the importation of poultry products including turkey and chicken.
While the ban has been in effect for more than a decade, its enforcement, however, has been viewed by some stakeholders in the poultry industry as largely ineffective as these products arestill being smuggled into the country from Cotonou in Benin Republic, majorly. The resultant effect of this is that the local poultry industry h

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has lauded Chi Farms and Zoetis for the establishment of City Laboratory, an ultra-modern veterinary diagnostic centre in Ibadan, Oyo State.
Ogbeh, who spoke through the Director and Chief Veterinary Officer, Department of Veterinary and Pest Control Services, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Olaniran Alabi, stated that the commissioning of the diagnostic centre justifies the collaborative efforts of t

Declining GDP numbers cast shadows on potency of Buhari’s ERGP
“Agriculture is not just crops; when you destroyed a farmland (or even cattle-rearing), the back and forth are affecting both crop production and livestock and agriculture is the biggest part of our GDP and that is slowing down the economy.”Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), on August 27, 2018, released its second quarter 2018 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report, with woeful showing of th

Paul Osuyi, Asaba
In order to boost the state’s economy and create employment, Delta State government has established 25 farm enterprise clusters where 782 hitherto unemployment youths were trained and are now managing the clusters as owners.
In one of the enterprises, Deghele Rice Farm Cluster in Sapele Local Government Area of the state, 21 farmers under the Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurs Programme (YAGEP) vowed to meet the rice needs of Nigerians particularly during the Yuletide.
The

Residents of Isawo community in Ikorodu on Sunday appealed to the Lagos State Government to complete the “abandoned” Agric-Isawo-Arepo road project in the area.
They made the appeal in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria.
The Chairman, Isawo Community Development Association, Alhaji Adisa Owolabi, told NAN that the abandoned road project had led to loss of properties, extended travel time and high transport fare for residents.
According to the chairman, many communiti

Nike PopoolaNo fewer than 334,765 retirees have been paid a total of N538.118bn under the Contributory Pension Scheme as of the end of June 2018.
This is according to figures released by the Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria during a seminar in Lagos.
The association disclosed that 187,000 of the beneficiaries were on programmed withdrawal; 342 retired on health ground; 51,863 were on annuity; while 95,424 were paid en bloc.
PenOp explained that the balance in a person’s Retire

Ifeanyi Onuba, Abuja
The Director General, National Emergency Management Agency, Mr Mustapha Maihaja, has inaugurated five emergency operation centres to facilitate prompt search and rescue operations.
The centres, according to the agency, are also expected to provide humanitarian support in the 12 states that are mostly affected by flooding.
The five emergency centres with eight personnel are to cover Niger, Kwara, Kogi, Edo, Benue, Taraba, Adamawa, Anamabra, Delta, Rivers and Bayelsa states.
T

’Femi Asu
Many Nigerians paid more for petroleum products, including Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) and household kerosene, last month, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The average price paid by consumers for petrol increased by 1.7 per cent year-on-year and 0.1 per cent month-on-month to N146.90 per litre in August from N146.80 in July.
States with the highest average price of petrol were Borno (N157), Kebbi (N152.94) and Kwara (N152.86), while Ekiti, Katsina and B

Adelani Adepegba, Abuja
The Nigeria Labour Congress has asked the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to probe the operations of MTN Nigeria following allegations of illicit financial flow and tax evasion levelled against the firm.
The union said it had been vindicated by a recent report by the Central Bank of Nigeria on the alleged illicit activities of the company and the tax evasion report of the office of the Attorney General of the Federation against MTN.
The President, NLC, Ayuba Wabb

Emirates Airline has announced the upgrade of the Abuja route’s operating aircraft to a Boeing 777-300ER from the 777-300 classic, with effect from September 15, 2018.
The airline said with the development, the EK785 and 786 would be on the Dubai-Abuja-Dubai routes four times in a week.
The Regional Manager, West Africa, Emirates Airline, Afzal Parambil, said, “The upgrade of our Abuja service to a Boeing 777-300ER demonstrates our commitment to the Nigerian market and is another ste

To consolidate on its aggressive spending on infrastructure and consign the recent recession into the dustbin of history, the Federal Government has come up with the estimates of its expenditure and incomes for next year, with the fiscal deficit set to hit N2.59tn, IFEANYI ONUBA writes
The Federal Government is planning to spend a total of N8.9tn in the 2019 fiscal period.
The amount is an increase of N305.86bn over the original estimates of N8.61tn presented to the legislature on November 7, 20

The risk of a fraudster accessing your bank account through the card you use at the ATM or a shop terminal is very real. In fact, card fraud accounts for more billions a year according to www.macquarie.com.
But there are a few simple steps anyone can take to minimise the risk of people accessing our accounts via our cards.
Check the machine
One of the most common ways a scammer will try to get access to your bank account is at the ATM. This is usually done by installing a ‘skimmer’ o

Ozioma Ubabukoh
 While financial technology, popularly known as Fintech, is seen as a threat to traditional banking, it has helped boost financial inclusion in many parts of the world.
A professional services firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers Nigeria, recently assessed the rise of Fintech in Nigeria’s financial services industry, its potential impact on market players and the attitude of incumbents on the latest developments.
According to its Nigeria FinTech Survey Report 2017, retail bank

Jennifer Abraham
[email protected]
My last two articles have centred on value-addition business ideas for entrepreneurs. However, performance of businesses sometimes depends on the investment climate and that is where policy-makers come in. It is not the want of ideas that has left the economy in a stymie, it is more of the inclemency of the operating environment and unrealistic economic empowerment programmes that have discouraged productivity and left many travelling seeming

The success of our day is largely dependent on the quality of our planning. Not to miss out anything in their essential duties, some people prefer to make a list of upcoming tasks in a notebook, while others have long started using digital technology solutions.
According to Life Hack, calendar applications are some of the main tools that are worth using to organise one’s life and plan time carefully.
Many people have switched to specific tools; however, there are still some who do not use

Feyisayo Popoola
The Nigerian Stock Exchange has called on individuals and organisations to financially support the purchase of mobile cancer units.
The Chief Executive Officer, NSE, Oscar Onyema, who was represented by the Executive Director, Regulation, NSE, Tinuade Awe, at the 5th NSE Corporate Challenge in Lagos on Saturday, said N57m (net of expenses) had been saved up towards the project.
“We have some way to go to purchase the first mobile cancer unit but we believe with the continu

Nike Popoola
The new Chairman of the Nigerian Insurers Association, Mr Tope Smart, said he would focus on a five-point agenda to give a new direction to the association for the next two years.
He gave the theme of his tenure as “NIA first, insurance first,” during his investiture as the 23rd chairman of the association.
Stakeholders from different sectors of the economy were present at the investiture.
He identified his plans as the protection of interests of member companies, 

The Federal Government must take more loans if its plan to fund infrastructure is to be realised, according to the Senior Analyst at Agusto & Co, Mr Jimi Ogbobine.
Ogbobine said this on Sunday at a training for financial journalists during the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria 2018 annual workshop in Lagos, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.
He stated that the government was expected to deploy about N1.6tn to fund infrastructure this year.
Ogbobine said the bulk of financin

The Acting Director-General, National Pension Commission, Mrs Aisha Dahir-Umar, has said that the informal sector will be allowed to join the Contributory Pension Scheme under its micro-pensions scheme in the first quarter of 2019.
She said this during the 6th conference for directors of pension operators in Lagos, which was organised by the commission as part of its statutory mandate of promoting capacity building and institutional strengthening of licensed pension operators.
Dahir-Umar said, &