Africa Business News

Moody’s Investors Service on Wednesday said Nigerian banks’ foreign currency funding gap will rise to $5bn over the current low oil prices, volatile foreign inflows and lower remittances amid coronavirus pandemic.
Moody’s, in its July 2020 report, titled ‘Renewed foreign-currency shortages highlight vulnerability for banks’, said the challenges were threatening to renew the foreign currency liquidity pressures that blighted Nigerian banks during a previous oil crisis in 2016-2017.
A banking analyst at Moody’s, Peter Mushangwe, said lower dollar inflows at a time when foreign currency borrowing will likely be more expensive for Nigerian banks will strain their foreign currency funding, despite substantial improvements compared to 2016.
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The core investors in the Discos are looking to restructure the loans advanced to them by banks for the acquisition of the assets.
The Discos also want the Central Bank of Nigeria Nigerian Electricity Market Stabilisation Fund disbursed to them to be restructured for longer duration.
The CBN introduced a N213bn intervention fund, a loan facility with a 10-year repayment period in September 2014, about a year after the privatisation of the power sector
The NEMSF was meant to assist the Gencos and Discos to settle legacy gas debts, execute agreed metering and maintenance programmes, and finance procurement of transformers and other equipment.
According to the Discos, the total amount of Discos’ portion of the CBN NEMSF is N49.9bn and a part of that cash was used as collateral for letter of credit guarantees to banks.
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The Senate on Wednesday summoned the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, to brief it on measures to curb tax evasion by expatriates.
The decision followed a motion by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Roads Maintenance Agency, Senator Gershom Basset.
Also summoned were heads of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, the heads of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, the Nigerian Export-Import Bank, and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, among other relevant institutions.
The panels are also expected to appraise of the FIRS’ current framework for tracing, identifying, preventing and sanctioning cross-border tax evasion and other illicit financial outflows.
The Senate asked the committees to come up with a holistic legislative framework on how to repatriate lost revenue due to illicit financial flows.
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The Federal Government has increased the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit, also known as petrol from N140.80 to N143.80 per litre.
Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) Abdulkadir Saidu on Wednesday announced the increment in a statement.
The statement said the new price was made after a review of the prevailing market fundamentals in the month of June and considering marketers’ realistic operating costs, as much as practicable.
It further said that all marketers are advised to operate within the indicative prices as advised by the PPPRA.
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The Federal Government has announced the resumption of domestic flights in the country.
The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, announced this in a tweet on Wednesday.
According to him, the Abuja and Lagos airports will resume domestic operations on July 8, while the Kano, Port Harcourt, Owerri and Maiduguri airports would resume on the 11th.
Other airports are also expected to resume operations on the 15th.
Sirika, however, noted that a date for the international airports will be announced in due course.
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Volvo Cars on Wednesday said it was recalling nearly 2.2 million cars built between 2006 and 2019 to address a potential issue with cables attached to their front seat belts in the automaker’s biggest ever recall.
Volvo said it would contact owners of the affected models, such as the V60, V70 and XC60, asking them to contact their Volvo retailer to have their cars repaired free of charge.
The carmaker, owned by China’s Geely, said it had not received any reports of accidents or injuries connected to the flaw and that the move was preventative to avoid any possible issues in the future.
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German logistics company DHL on Wednesday said it has temporarily suspended picking up import shipments from China to India, after border tensions between the countries led to clearance delays.
According to a BloomberQuint report, another prominent freight transporter FedEx Corp has also suspended shipments, adding that the company is facing backlogs beyond its control.
A DHL representative confirmed to Reuters that the recent delay in customs clearance of cargo into India caused the shipment company's DHL Express India unit to temporarily suspend pickups from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. 
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The European Central Bank is lowering the bar for bank mergers in the euro zone, hoping to encourage an elusive wave of consolidation in a sector plagued by low profits and unresolved issues inherited from the last financial crisis.
In a guide published on Wednesday, the ECB clarified that merged entities won't necessarily be asked for extra capital and will be allowed to use their own accounting models as well as any paper profit that occurs when an asset is bought below its book value.
These were some of the concerns flagged by bankers in recent years when evaluating mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the euro zone.
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The head of human resources at sportswear giant Adidas has resigned amid a row over the firm's corporate culture and lack of diversity.
Karen Parkin a British citizen who had worked at Adidas for more than 20 years.
Her exit follows protests by Adidas staff over a comment she reportedly made at an internal meeting last year.
Global brands face increasing pressure to take action over racial equality after the death of George Floyd.
In a statement issued by the world’s second largest sportswear maker Ms Parkin said that she had always stood against racism and had decided to retire and pave the way for change.
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Two leading UK firms, the insurer Aviva and the Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) have become the latest to put a hold on advertising on Facebook.
They join Ford, Adidas, HP, Coca Cola, Unilever and Starbucks, which have all acted in response to how the social network deals with hate speech.
The Stop Hate for Profit campaign claims that Facebook is not doing enough to remove hateful content.
Facebook has said it wants to be a force for good.
Ahead of the latest developments, the tech firm's UK director Steve Hatch told BBC that there was no profit in content that is hateful.
Aviva said they regularly review which social media platforms they use and have taken this moment to pause and reassess Aviva's use of Facebook for advertising in the UK.
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