Nigeria Government Earns N724bn From Oil In Three Months

Figures in the fiscal account report of the Federal Government of Nigeria showed that the Government generated a sum of N724.63bn as oil revenue within the first three months of the year 2016.

According to the report prepared by the accountant general of the federation, the country earned a total of N252.10bn as crude oil revenue in January while February and March recorded N251.17bn and N221.35bn, respectively.

A breakdown of the N724.63bn showed that the government through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation generated N511.28bn from oil proceeds while the balance of N213.35bn came in from taxes paid by oil companies to the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

An analysis of the statistics showed that the N511.28bn oil revenue by the NNPC was generated as follows: crude oil sales (export and domestic), N402.18bn; gas sales, N6.36bn; oil and gas royalties, N100.69bn.

JPMorgan Wins Approval To Open Three New Branches In India

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) said on Friday it has won approval from India's central bank to open three more branches in the country even as most foreign banks are scaling back their operations in India.

JPMorgan obtained approval from the Reserve Bank of India to open branches in the capital New Delhi, and in the southern cities of Bengaluru and Chennai, it said in a release.

The branches are expected to be operational in the next few months, the bank said.

After Market Spasm, Wall Street Looks Past Brexit

A week-long convulsion in U.S. stocks induced by Britain's vote to leave the European Union has left some on Wall Street feeling a little bit better, thanks to stronger expectations of prolonged low interest rates.

The result of the June 23 referendum has created a bounty of uncertainty about the future of the United Kingdom, Europe and the global economy. But since those questions will likely take years to answer, many U.S. investors are focusing on what they see as an immediate, virtual certainty - that the Federal Reserve will not raise interest rates anytime soon.

Nigeria External Reserves Drop To $26.33bn

The nation’s external reserves fell marginally to $26.33bn on June 29, down 0.30 per cent from a month ago, the Central Bank of Nigeria data has revealed.

The foreign exchange reserves  stood at $26.42bn on May 27, down by 9.2 per cent year-to-year.

The reserves had stood on the $26.4bn mark between May 24 and 27, after dropping to $26.5bn from $26.6bn same month.

Between May 31 and June 7, the external reserves stood at the $26.3bn mark, before rising back to the $26.4bn mark on June 8, a level it maintained till June 24. On June 27, it fell back to $26.36bn.

Interbank Rate Drops As Market Liquidity Surges

 

 The nation’s interbank overnight rate fell to five per cent on Friday from 15 per cent a week ago, as cash from maturing treasury bills and payments by the government to contractors helped boost liquidity.

The increased cash flow left the money market with a N267.10bn surplus balance on Friday, reversing the N300bn shortfall of a week ago and pushing down the cost of borrowing among commercial lenders, according to Reuters.

“There was repayment of about N115.03bn in matured treasury bills at the Open Market Operations on Thursday, while the release of an unspecified amount of cash payment to government contractors also boosted system liquidity,” one dealer said. Many banks had approached the central bank’s discount window to borrow short-term cash last week to enable them meet obligations and ease liquidity pressures, traders said.

Traders said the expected release of capital spending by the federal government to re-inflate the economy should inject more cash into the money market in the coming days, which should impact positively on the interbank rate.

Sahara Group Empowers Engineers To Boost Electricity Supply In Nigeria

In order to contribute to electricity generation in the country, Sahara Power, one of the affiliates of Sahara Group, says it is leveraging on its Graduate Engineering Programme to shore up power generation and distribution.

The managing director, Sahara Power, Kola Adesina, said the GEP was part of the company’s commitment to sustaining human capital development in the country’s power sector to ensure enhanced productivity.

Mr. Adesina said Sahara Power and its affiliates, Egbin Power Plc, Ikeja Electric (IE) and First Independent Power Limited (FIPL), along with its technical partner, Korea Electric Corporation (KEPCO), were committed to a plan to shore up electricity generation and distribution in the country.

NEITI to Partner EFCC to Tackle Financial Crimes in Nigeria’s Oil Sector

 As part of effort to clean the Oil and Gas sector in Nigeria of corruption, The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative says it is currently partnering the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to tackle financial crimes in the sector.

The country’s oil sector has remained overshadowed with corruption and lack of transparency in oil dealings which has resulted in huge losses in revenue as oil is the mainstay of the country.

The Executive Secretary of NEITI, Waziri Adio, told the Senate recently that the country lost about $9 billion in 2013 alone due to sharp practices in the sector.

“They said we don’t have teeth to bite, and right now we’ve gone to the EFCC to borrow the teeth,” NEITI’s Director of Communications, Ogbonnaya Orji, said on Thursday at a journalism training programme for oil and gas reporting in Lagos.

The training, sponsored by the Natural Resources Governance Institute (NGRI) held at the School of Media and Communication, Pan-Atlantic University, Lekki, with participants drawn from different media houses across Nigeria.

Barclays Appoints Ex-Tiger CEO Peter Matlare Deputy CEO, Africa

Barclays Africa Group has appointed Tiger Brands former CEO Peter Matlare as Deputy Chief Executive Officer. Matlare will be responsible for its rest of Africa banking operations with effect from 1 August 2016. He will remain on the board but change from non-executive to executive director.

In a statement the bank said the following:

The appointment of a Deputy CEO and Executive Director to oversee the rest of Africa business underscores Barclays Africa’s strategy to grow across all its markets in Africa.

Group Chief Executive Officer, Maria Ramos commented: “Peter is a seasoned executive that brings a wealth of skills and leadership experience across multiple industries. He knows our business intimately having served as an independent non-executive director since 2011. We look forward to his contribution as we continue to pursue our growth strategy in markets across the continent.”

“Barclays Africa is a robust business with excellent growth opportunities on the African continent. I am delighted to join a team that has delivered sustainable and strong returns for shareholders on the back of a sound and differentiated strategy, and I look forward to contributing to its success in a new role on the Executive Committee,” said Matlare.

Petrochemical firm Sasol To Buy Chevron’s South Africa Asset

Petrochemicals firm Sasol said on Friday it was considering buying a majority stake in Chevron's South African assets, including a 110,000 barrels-per-day oil refinery and retail stations.

Chevron, which has had a presence in South Africa for more than a century, said in January it would sell its 75 percent stake in its business in the country after making similar sales in Nigeria due to weak oil prices.

"Sasol is working with Chevron and its advisers in this regard," spokesman Alex Anderson said in an email to Reuters.

The company, which is the world's biggest maker of fuel from coal, is slashing costs due to the plunge in oil prices by shelving major projects and cutting jobs.

Rwanda To Generates Power From Lake ‘Demons’ To Power The Economy

Rwandans blame the "demons" of Lake Kivu for the deaths of fisherman and others who have occasionally disappeared on one of Africa's great expanses of water in the heart of the continent.

Now Rwanda is turning the methane gas which can bubble up from the lake bed, sometimes with fatal consequences, into a lifeline by generating electricity to help businesses expand and light up a nation with a chronic power shortage according to Reuters.

Across Africa, governments are struggling to increase power capacity and expand grids to meet the demands of growing populations with rising aspirations. Poor electricity supplies are often cited as one of the biggest hurdles to investment.

Rwanda's KivuWatt plant, which started in May, is part of a network of projects aimed at providing 70 percent of the 11 million population with power from the grid or off-grid by 2018, up from 25 percent now. Much will come from renewable resources.

U.S. Fed Awards $113.43 Billion In Reverse Repos

 The Federal Reserve on Friday awarded $113.43 billion of four-day, fixed-rate reverse repurchase agreements to 51 bidders at an interest rate of 0.25 percent, the New York Fed said on its website.

On Thursday, the Fed allotted $278.81 billion in one-day reverse repos to 92 bidders, including Wall Street dealers, money market mutual funds and mortgage finance agencies, also at an interest rate of 0.25 percent.

The reverse repurchase agreement program is seen as a critical policy tool for the U.S. central bank to drain money from the financial system in an effort to achieve its interest rate objectives.

Brazilian Court Freezes $6m Of Facebook's Money During Whatsapp Encryption Case

A court in Brazil on Thursday blocked 19.5m reals ($6.07m) of Facebook’s money after its WhatsApp messaging service failed to turn over messages sought in a drugs case – despite the fact that the company has no access to its users’ messages.

Brazil’s federal police said WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook , has defied repeated orders to turn over messages sent and received by suspected members of an international cocaine smuggling ring that has been under investigation since January.

Without the data, police said, it will be difficult or impossible to prove links between those captured in recent raids and their confederates in Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Spain, the news site G1 reported.

However, the problem for police is this: WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that the company has no access to the messages and pictures its users send each other, and so could not possibly comply with the order even if it wanted to.

After repeated failure over five months to turn over the information, a judge in Brazil’s southern Paraná state froze the funds, which are equal to WhatsApp’s accumulated fines for non-compliance in the case, G1 said.

Because WhatsApp has no bank accounts in Brazil, the judge froze funds owned by its parent, Facebook, the article said.

Pound Edges In Asia After Leaning On Rate Cut Talk

The pound edged up on Friday after tumbling in US trade following hints from the head of the Bank of England that it was ready to cut interest rates to stem fallout from Britain’s decision to quit the European Union.

A week after the unexpected Brexit vote, Mark Carney sought to reassure anxious investors that Threadneedle Street would step into financial markets.

“The economic outlook has deteriorated and some monetary policy easing will likely be required over the summer,” he said in a speech Thursday in London.

Sterling plunged one percent Thursday after his comments, ending the day at $1.3314, having broken above $1.35 earlier in the day.

But on Friday in Tokyo it rose to $1.3327. The currency slumped to a 31-year-low of $1.3121 at the start of the week.

Lagos Rating Goes Low To B+’, With Stable Outlook- Fitch

Fitch Ratings has downgraded Lagos State’s Long-term foreign currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘B+’ from ‘BB-‘ with a stable outlook.

The downgrade, according to the global rating agency reflected the application of Fitch’s “International Local and Regional Government’s Rating Criteria – Outside the United States.”

Therefore, following the recent downgrade of Nigeria’s Long-term foreign currency IDR, it decided to take a similar rating action on Lagos at the same level as the sovereign.

“Lagos’s ratings are capped by the sovereign. A downgrade of the sovereign’s ratings would lead to a corresponding action on Lagos’s IDR. In the absence of a sovereign downgrade, an operating margin declining towards 30 per cent unfavourable changes in the national tax policy, debt rising beyond Fitch’s expectations of N350-N400 billion over the medium term and economic instability, even at the local level, could lead to a downgrade.

“A sovereign upgrade could be reflected by Lagos’s ratings, provided that improvements in budgetary performance result in debt levels at 1x the budget size (about N400billion). Further improvement of the local economy giving additional boost to internally generated revenues would also be positive for the ratings,” it stated.

Fitch Ratings recently downgraded Nigeria’s long-term foreign currency IDR to ‘B+’ from ‘BB-‘ as well as the country’s long-term local currency IDR to ‘BB-‘ from ‘BB’.

Diamond Bank Partners SME100 to Boost MSMEs’ Capacity

 As part of its commitment to building and supporting economic growth and development in the country, Diamond Bank, in partnership with SME100, has rolled out strategic capacity development programmes that would boost the productive strength of Micro, Small and Medium scale Enterprises, MSMEs.

The Bank’s Chief Executive Officer, Uzoma Dozie, stated at a networking event which held recently in Lagos for MSME operators and stakeholders, that the sector held the key to rapid economic growth, pointing that the adoption of technology in structuring their businesses was the surest way to business stability and predictable breakthrough.

Speaking on the topic: “The Age of Digital Disruption; Leveraging Technology for Business Growth,” Dozie in his highly engaging session, noted that the need for small businesses to adopt technology in their processes cannot be overemphasised, stressing that technology stimulates productivity while saving time and energy.

“The future of Africa is digital, and technology creates opportunities for the acquisition of useful skills and this should be embraced by all business owners. Business owners should have a platform that will enable them engage their customers from a conversational to a marketing perspective”. Dozie stated.

All Paper Currencies Are Doomed, Marc Faber Says

All paper currencies are "doomed" thanks to central bank policies around the world, said Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

"They are going to become worthless because of money printing. In other words, the purchasing power is going to continue to diminish as it has diminished for the last hundred years," Faber, known as Dr. Doom, said in an interview with CNBC's "Power Lunch" Friday.

And the Brexit vote last week means even more money printing in the U.K., Japan and the United States, he said.

Therefore, he expects the dollar to go down against gold; silver and platinum — which he believes are going to "vastly" outperform the U.S. stock market.

Interswitch Holds Interactive Session In Lagos

Interswitch, one of the pioneers in loyalty marketing in Nigeria recently organised a workshop centered on contemporary loyalty solutions management.

This interactive seminar which held at the Eko Hotels and Suites on the 24th of June 2016 combined Data Analytics and Loyalty Marketing best practices along with case studies and testimonials on what has worked and what clients could learn from and adopt in their respective businesses.

The workshop was organised in partnership with ICLP Dubai and Welcome Real-Time (Members of the Collinson Group, a renowned global leader in Loyalty Services) to share deep and extensive know-how and practical insights on running effective reward/loyalty programs that drive business growth and ensure significant return on marketing investments and profitability in the long run.