A British man who travelled from London on 28 February has been confirmed as Thailand's latest coronavirus case.

The Ministry of Public Health said on Friday that the 43-year-old had transited in Hong Kong for a few hours on 29 February. He went to a private hospital in Thailand on 3 March with a fever. He is currently undergoing treatment.

There are 48 confirmed cases of the virus in Thailand.

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Asian stock markets have fallen again amid fears that the coronavirus may cause a global economic slump.

Shares on the Nikkei index in Japan closed down 2.72%. Investors were disappointed that the Bank of Japan did not intervene to support the market. Meanwhile, Hong Kong's Hang Seng is down 2.3% in afternoon trading.

The Asian Development Bank says the coronavirus will hit the economies of developing Asian economies hard. It says there will be sharp declines in areas including tourism and business travel as well as supply disruptions.

It is as yet not clear how serious the economic loss could be due to uncertainty surrounding how the outbreak with develop.

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Kenya has named two popular tourism destinations among regions at high risk of coronavirus outbreak. According to local media reports, the coastal towns of Mombasa and Kilifi, which have a high influx of tourists, have been placed on high alert.

The country's capital, Nairobi, is also listed as a high risk area because of its main airport. Kenya's head of disease surveillance, Dr Daniel Lang'at, is quoted as saying the border regions in the western and north-eastern parts of the country are also at risk.

The country is yet to record any confirmed case of coronavirus.

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Twitter's CEO, Jack Dorsey, is reconsidering plans to spend part of the year in Africa in the wake of coronavirus outbreak. He reportedly stated this while speaking at the Morgan Stanley conference in California.

Mr Dorsey, in November 2019, had announced plans to move to the continent for up to six months this year.

Dorsey had not announced the country he would be based, but there had been speculation that it could be Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria or South Africa. These were the countries he visited during his month-long trip last year.

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Cameroon's minister of public health has confirmed the country's first case of coronavirus. The patient is a 58-year-old French citizen who arrived in the capital, Yaoundé, on 24 February. He has been placed in solitary confinement at Yaoundé Central Hospital.

This brings the total number of confirmed cases on the African continent to 26: 17 in Algeria, 4 in Senegal, 2 people in Egypt, one recorded case in Morocco, a confirmed case in Nigeria and 2 persons in Tunisia.

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Nigeria and other members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries have agreed to cut oil production by additional 1.5 million barrels per day in the second quarter of 2020 in a bid to prop-up prices.

The agreement, which was reached at the 178th (Extraordinary) Meeting of the Conference of OPEC in Vienna, Austria, needs the backing of its 10 allies led by Russia.

OPEC also recommended that the existing cuts of 2.1 million bpd, which would expire this month, should be kept in place until the end of 2020. OPEC and its allies will meet on Friday to discuss the recommendations.

The conference, in a statement, said the COVID-19 outbreak has had a major adverse impact on global economic and oil demand forecasts in 2020, particularly for the first and second quarters.

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AFEX Commodities Exchange Limited, FMDQ Holdings have formalised a partnership to solidify their mutual interest in developing products to deepen the Nigerian capital market.

The collaboration recognises the importance of product innovation to market development and encouraging participation of a wider swathe of investors in the capital market. The partnership is expected to help deliver new initiatives focused on deeping the Nigerian capital market.

Products developed under this new partnership are expected to support innovative financing structures for the sector by leveraging AFEX's established infrastructure and supply chain network as well as FMDQ's extensive experience as innovators in the Nigerian financial markets.

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Ministers of Finance and Governors of Central Banks in Africa will converge at Abuja between Monday, March 9 and Tuesday 10, 2020, for a Senior Policy Seminar on agriculture.

The seminar, organised by the Central Bank of Nigeria and the African Economic Research Consortium, is aimed at promulgating a policy on how the continent would leverage research for agricultural development.

The seminar is also expected to provide high-level African policy makers the opportunity to come together to discuss and exchange ideas as well as policy experiences.

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Nigeria’s debt profile has hit 33.078 trillion naira following the Senate’s approval of a 22.7-billion-dollar loan request by President Muhammadu Buhari. The approval pushed up Nigeria's total debt from 85.4 billion dollars accumulated as at the end of September 2019.

President Buhari had asked the 8th National Assembly to approve the Medium Term External Borrowing Plan for 2016-2018, but the leadership of the Senate led by Senator Bukola Saraki rejected the request for lacking details. The loan is to fund critical infrastructure projects in the country.

It was approved following the adoption of the recommendations of the report of the Senate Local and Foreign Loans Committee.

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The net foreign assets of banks in Nigeria rose slightly to 14.19 trillion naira at the end of November, 2019. This is according to data released by the Central bank in its economic report for the fourth quarter of 2019. The rise, relative to the level in the preceding quarter, was as a result of the increase in foreign asset holdings of the banking system. According to the figures, net foreign assets of banking systems grew by 2 percent at the end of November, against the 24.7 percent decline of Q3 2019 and 2.2 percent drop in Q4 2018.

The report said other net assets of banking systems at the end of November 2019 fell by 4.9 percent, compared with the 17.4 per cent decline at the end of Q3 2019.

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