Africa Business News

The House of Representatives has resolved to investigate the alleged illegal withdrawal of funds from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited amounting to $1.05bn by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
 The resolution followed the adoption of a motion moved by the Minority Leader, Ndudi Elumelu, at the plenary on Tuesday, entitled ‘Need to Investigate the Illegal Withdrawals from the NLNG Dividends Account by the Management of NNPC.’
The House said that there was no transparency in this extra-budgetary spending, as only the Group Managing Director and the corporation’s Chief Financial Officer had the knowledge of how the $1.05bn was spent.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Tuesday said it posted a total revenue of N192.4bn from the sale of petrol, kerosene and diesel in the month of March.
In its latest monthly financial and operations report for March 2020 released on Tuesday, the oil firm said its highest earning during the month under review was from petrol.
It made N191.98bn from the sale of petrol. The corporation earned N104.8m and N285.1m from the sale of diesel and kerosene respectively.
The report, however, indicated a trading deficit of ₦9.53bn for the NNPC group in March 2020, compared to the ₦3.95bn surplus posted in February 2020.
The firm explained that the decline of over 300 per cent in the month was due primarily to the huge decrease of 181 per cent in the performance of Nigeria Petroleum Development Company, the flagship subsidiary of the corporation.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The African Development Bank on Tuesday said the outbreak of coronavirus in Africa could cost Nigeria, Togo and other countries on the continent $236.7bn in their cumulative Gross Domestic Product.
It said this in its report on African Economic Outlook (Supplement).
The bank projected that if the COVID-19 pandemic and its harsh impacts persist on the continent beyond the first half of this year, there would be deeper contraction of the continent’s GDP.
It estimated the Real GDP of Africa to contract by 1.7 per cent this year.
This represents a 5.6 percentage points drop from the January 2020 pre-COVID–19 projection if the virus has a substantial impact but of short duration.
The AfDB, however, explained that a prolonged situation into the second half of this year caused by the pandemic would result in deeper GDP contraction.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday praised China’s contributions towards the reversal of infrastructure deficit in Nigeria.
He said such contributions were visible in the areas of rail, roads, airports and power.
According to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, the President spoke while receiving the outgoing Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Nigeria, Dr Zhou Pingjian, at a virtual farewell audience.
The statement was titled President Buhari lauds outgoing ambassador, says China playing great role in reversing Nigeria’s infrastructural deficit.”
Buhari added that China had played its role effectively in all the Memoranda of Understanding signed with Nigeria, and appreciate it.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Nigerian Economic Summit Group has asked the Federal Government, state and local governments to publish data on revenue collection annually in order to develop a sustainable fiscal system for the country.
 This was one of the recommendations made by the NESG Fiscal Policy Roundtable where stakeholders deliberated on ways of improving Nigeria’s financial system.
NESG in a 10-point agenda published by the group on Tuesday said given the economic problems that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, policy, legislative and administrative changes were required to boost the growth and development of Nigeria’s economy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China has unveiled new powers to censor Hong Kong’s internet and access user data using its feared national security law but US tech giants have put up some resistance citing rights concerns.
The online censorship plans were contained in a 116-page government document released on Monday night that also revealed expanded powers for police, allowing warrantless raids and surveillance for some national security investigations.
Late Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke out against Orwellian moves to censor activists, schools and libraries since the law was enacted.
Pompeo said Hong Kong flourished because it allowed free thinking and free speech, under an independent rule of law.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Samsung Electronics forecast a 23-percent rise in second-quarter operating profit Tuesday, with strong demand for memory chips and displays overcoming the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on smartphone sales.
The world’s biggest smartphone and memory chip maker in an earnings estimate said that it expected operating profit to be 8.1 trillion won ($6.8 billion) for April-June, up from 6.6 trillion won in the same period last year.
The prediction was far ahead of analyst forecasts of a single-digit decline.
Market observer Counterpoint, Park Jin-suk said the earnings surprise seems to have stemmed from Samsung’s memory chip sector observer Counterpoint, pointing to increased demand for memory chips for PCs and a continuing rise in DRAM chip prices.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TikTok has said it will quit Hong Kong after China imposed a new security law on the city.
A spokesman told the BBC that due to the recent events, they have decided to stop operations of the TikTok app in Hong Kong.
According to the Reuters news agency, the company's exit from the city will come "within days.
Facebook and Twitter said this week they were pausing co-operation with Hong Kong police over user information.
The short-form video app was launched by China-based ByteDance for users outside mainland China as part of a strategy to grow its global audience.
The tech company operates a similar short video sharing app in China called Douyin.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

South Africa’s rand weakened in early trade on Tuesday as worries over surges in coronavirus infections reactivated investor concerns about the economic impact Of the pandemic.
At 0700 GMT, the rand was 0.43% weaker at 17.0875 per dollar from an overnight close of 17.00 in New York as sentiment again swung from optimism to nervousness with investors continuing to assess the COVID-19 impact.
Analysts at Nedbank in a note said despite the recent easing of local lockdown measures, the current levels of activity in markets have yet to suggest any recovery.
He added that the rand is currently trading in the middle of the short-term technical range, and the objective on the downside remains around the 16.7000 level.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Data on Thursday showed that the South African central bank reduced its government bond purchases to 5 billion rand ($292.64 million) in June, half the monthly average, bringing its bond holdings to 35.9 billion rand.
The Reserve Bank began a series of emergency liquidity measures in late March to ease the stress on banks and capital markets caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Among them were extra repo auctions and 275 basis points worth of lending rate cuts.
The bank’s June statement of assets and liabilities showed its accommodation to commercial banks via repurchase, or repo agreements, had fallen to 60 billion rand in June from 73.5 billion in the previous month.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices