News Express

A new report by the European Investment Bank (EIB) based on a 2023 survey of Banking in Africa has found that banks on the continent have continued to show resilience despite operating in what the EIB described as “ a difficult environment.”
The report titled “Uncertain Times, Resilient Banks: African Finance at a Crossroads” released under the EIB’s eighth annual Investment in Africa report and covering the continent’s banking system, found that banking in Africa continues to show resilience and a desire to support private sector development despite operating in a tough environment.
Key banking indicators, such as capital ratios, profitability and non-performing loans, have not deteriorated despite the challenges the region is facing,” the EIB report noted.
This resilience, according to the report, may rightly be attributed initially to pandemic support measures to bolster the continent’s banking system, but it said such measures have been wound down, and that “most key bank metrics remain solid.”

The Group Of The World’s 20 Leading Economies has admitted the African Union (AU) as a permanent member, a development termed by many as a “later than never” acknowledgement of Africa’s relevance on the global stage.
Until now, South Africa was the bloc’s only G20 member and the AU had advocated for full membership for seven years in its quest to gain meaningful roles among the global bodies and also accord the 55 member states access to reforms in the global financial system such as the World Bank which had hitherto played a passive role in cushioning Africa’s debt profile.
The AU’s G20 membership which was granted following a concession at the 18th G20 heads of state and government summit in New Delhi, India, is expected to see Africa get investment and political interest from a new generation of global powers beyond the U.S. and the continent’s former European colonists.

The Combination Of Aggressive interest-rate hikes in developed countries, lack of sufficient affordable capital from the World Bank and a failure to consider and address the spillover effects are creating costly spillback economic consequences on low-middle income countries already at high risk of debt distress, a new analysis from One Campaign says.
The international, non-profit advocacy and campaigning organisation that fights extreme poverty, particularly in developing countries, finds that ‘rich countries’ actions to control domestic inflation through rises in interest rates are creating unsustainable economic realities for low-and low-middle-income countries.
The high interest rates, it explained, are gradually locking emerging economies out of low-cost financing options creating an increasingly divergent global economy and exacerbating an already dangerous debt crisis.

After Over Two Years Of anticipation from the Nigerian populace, the National Bureau of Statistics eventually published Nigeria’s labour statistics, considered an official analysis of the employment level of Africa’s most populous country.
Prior to the report, economic and finance experts had difficulty assessing the real-time data on the nature of the labour market and how to measure the impact of government policies and numerous pledges to create jobs.
But from the country’s grim economic realities, it was as clear as crystal that the country was facing a dire risk of high unemployment. In fact, the International Labour Organisation had in January 2023, expressed worry that “current monetary tightening to fight inflation could overshoot, potentially leading to high levels of unemployment.”

The new head of the Nigerian treasury, officially designated ‘Minister of Finance’, Wale Edun, will have fully taken charge. But in the quest to see that all the levers of economic policy management are well aligned, the attention of analysts and others following the unfolding direction of the Nigerian economy, will shift to the person to be appointed substantive governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and consequently, the person to lead monetary policy during the President Tinubu’s administration.
Finance Minister Edun’s assumption of office has already raised high expectations, which will now be taken higher, with regard to the management of the fiscal policy side of executive governance, say multiple economic and financial analysts, many of whom hold the strong view that in the eight years that former president Muhammadu Buhari held sway in the political-administrative landscape of Nigeria, he was abysmally short on fiscal policy governance, with his two appointed ministers of finance arguably among the worst to have held the position in the country.

An expert in the Africa department of the International Monetary Fund has expressed optimism for the future success of Nigeria's e-Naira, Africa's first central bank digital currency and the world's second.
Despite its underwhelming performance since its launch in October 2021, Jack Ree, a senior economist in the Africa department of the IMF, who conducted a study on the eNaira last year, suggested in an IMF podcast that with some adjustments to its current model, the digital currency could become popular.
However, since its introduction 21 months ago, the e-Naira has struggled to gain traction, with less than one million downloads indicating that Nigeria's vast population has not yet fully embraced it, as this number is less than one per cent (-1%) of the total bank accounts in the banking system.

African currencies have lost ground against the US dollar year-to-date, thereby driving inflation in the import-reliant continent. Policymakers across the continent are left with limited options to arrest the decline as a result of depleting dollar reserves, according to a report adapted from DW.
As US interest rate hikes make the dollar more attractive to investors, sub-Saharan African currencies have been weakening. The downward spiral of the African currencies against the US dollar this year has been spelling trouble for citizens and businesses alike.
The Nigerian naira is, so far, the biggest loser, falling more than 70 per cent against the dollar this year, chiefly after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) removed trading restrictions on the official currency market.

A Crescendo Of Expectations is building up over Aba, one of Nigeria’s major manufacturing hubs, which for decades has had its stars dimmed by the ill luck of bad and incompetent governance and total neglect of the social and economic infrastructure required to make a manufacturing hub thrive.
The expectations are being built around the provenance of having the banker, Alex Otti, on the saddle as governor of Abia State where the city is located and where vultures had reigned in the corridors of political power; of Geometric Power, promoted by the scientist, Barth Nnaji, a two-time former minister of power and of science and technology; and the unleashing of the exports easing African Continental Free Area (AfCFTA), all three coming into play at the same time.

Former President Muhammadu Buhari who doubled as substantive minister of petroleum resources, assisted by a junior minister, Timipre Sylva and Mele Kyari, group chief executive officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited who was positioned to be running ground operations, may have been taken Nigerians for a big ride on the repairs and rehabilitation of government-owned refineries as work has long hit a dead end.
So as millions of Nigerians trudge under the heavy weight of mounting transportation costs, the fall out of the removal of petroleum products subsidy by President Bola Tinubu in his first major policy directive on inauguration day, any hopes of soon seeing a downward move on petrol pump prices from the restart of production at the Port Harcourt Refining Company, the nation’s first and biggest oil refinery, and later Warri Petrochemicals & Refining Company and Kaduna Refining & Petrochemicals Company, appear a forlorn dream.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the two Bretton Woods institutions that have spent at least 20 years breathing down Nigeria’s neck to let its currency, the Naira free, are today still in celebratory mood joined by domestic analysts and the markets who continue to express joy over the decision by the new government of President Bola Tinubu to reform the country’s foreign exchange policies through the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The head of the IMF Nigeria office, responding to the reforms, said: “The Fund greatly welcomes the authorities’ decision to introduce a unified market-reflective exchange rate regime in line with our long-standing recommendations. We stand ready to support the new administration in implementing FX reforms.