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The House of Representatives yesterday called on the Nigeria Customs Service to lift the ban on the delivery of petroleum products to filling stations located 20km from land borders. This followed the adoption of a motion by Sada Soli Jibiya (APC, Katsina) who cited negative effects of the ban on people living in the areas. Hibiya said the directive had brought more hardships to Nigerians living in the border communities. According to him, the directive also contradicts the laws establishing the Nigeria Customs Service. He said: "The directive is tantamount to the Nigeria Customs Service exercising powers that violate the provisions of the Customs and Exercise Act as amended". Hibiya, whose constituency is located along the border between Nigeria and Niger, said the directive "will no doubt increase the suffering of Nigerians living in the border areas who are already feeling the impact of the border closure more than the rest of the country", He also expressed concern that "no alternative provision has been made to cater for the needs of the border communities, knowing fully how dependent the Nigerian economy is on petroleum products". According to him, the Department of Petroleum Resources, whose statutory duty is to regulate the supply of petroleum, is yet to make any statement or clarification on the issue.

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The Senate on Tuesday appealed to the Federal Government to ban the importation of textiles for a period of five years to allow to produce local textiles. This followed the debate on a motion sponsored by Senator Kabir Barkiya (APC-Katsina Central) during the plenary session on “Urgent need to revamp the nation’ s comatose textile industry”. The upper chamber also appealed to the Federal Government to provide the necessary infrastructural facilities especially power supply to local textile manufacturing companies to revamp the industry. It also called on the government to encourage local textile manufacturing companies by providing them with soft loans and easy access to credit facilities through the Bank of Industry. Barkiya noted that the textile industry played a significant role in the manufacturing sector of the Nigerian economy with a record of over 140 companies in the 1960 s and 1970 s. “The textile industry recorded an annual growth of 67 percent and as of 1991, employed above 25 percent of the workers in the manufacturing sector. The textile industry was then the highest employer of labor apart from the civil service.” He noted that the industry had witnessed a massive decline in the last two decades with many textile companies such as Kaduna Textile, Kano Textile, and Aba Textile closing shop and throwing their workers into the job market. Contributing, Senator Robert Boroffice (APC-Ondo North) said that the importation of textile materials was as a result of the comatose textile industry.

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In response to the Federal Government’s plea for farmers not to take advantage of the current border closure, producers of the Ogoja Rice have disclosed plans to slash the price of the grain ahead of the Yuletide season. Chairman of the Santuscom Agro-Hub Investment Nigeria Limited, producers of Ogoja Rice, Paul Santus, said the company is willing to crash the price of its 50kg bag to N14,000, saying all is set to meet rice demand in-country despite the skyrocketing price of the commodity in the market, following the border closure. Recall that Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele, had appealed to rice farmers, millers and marketers not to increase the price of the grain, saying it would impact negatively on government’s aim on closing the borders. However, operators along the value chain cashed in on the situation to the extent that local rice, which sold at N16,000 for 50kg bag rose to N20,000 while foreign rice is sold at N22,000.

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The Monetary Authority of Singapore plans to create a $2 billion green finance program, the local media reported. The program is an initiative that will seek to establish the country as a major green financing hub on the global front. The program is called the Green Investments Programme. It will direct funds to asset managers who are focused on strengthening Singapore's green finance activities and capabilities. These asset managers will invest the funds in public market firms, according to MAS board member and Education Minister Ong Ye Kung. The program's green finance activities include green-focused funds management, introducing environmental considerations into investment processes and channeling capital toward investments with a strong sustainability portfolio. The Monetary Authority of Singapore is planning to allocate $100 billion for International Settlements' Green Bond Investment Pool as part of the program. Ye Kung told the local media that, "We can spur investments in renewables technology, in grid infrastructure, in battery storage. We also need investments in green buildings, efficient cooling, and industrial systems, to optimize energy consumption. In time, maybe even bring about investments in carbon sequestration." Besides investments, Singapore requires a range of green financing instruments such as bonds and loans. To date, green bonds worth more than $6 billion have been issued in Singapore. Singapore's real estate developers such as CapitaLand and City Developments have secured green loans from banks to build environment-friendly projects. 

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A rapid build-up of loans has pushed East African countries close to a debt crisis, putting at risk the region's long-term economic stability. Five East African Community member countries have together amassed more than $100 billion domestic and foreign debt, stretching their repayment budgets to the limit. Kenya and Burundi have the highest loan distress profiles relative to their EAC peers, with their debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratios projected to exceed 60 percent this year. The International Monetary Fund considers a debt to GDP ratio of 50 percent to be within the tolerable limit for developing economies such as the EAC members. "With several countries facing increased foreign exchange and refinancing risks, it is critical to enhancing debt management frameworks and transparency," warned the IMF in its latest Regional Economic Outlook report released a week ago. Kenya's debt-to-GDP ratio is on course to hit 61.6 percent at the end of this year from 60.1 percent last year, while Burundi's ratio is expected to climb to a high of 63.5 percent from 58.4 per in 2018. Rwanda's debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to touch 49.1 percent from 40.7 percent, taking Kigali closer to the 50 percent threshold. The debt-to-GDP ratios for Uganda and Tanzania will increase to 43.6 percent and 37.7 percent from 41.4 percent and 37.3 percent respectively. The surging debt loads of EAC countries have stoked fears over future capacity to meet repayment obligations, with indications that the region is headed into a debt overhang prompted by an increased appetite for quick and expensive loans.

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Fifteen more shops belonging to Nigerians were shut down yesterday by members of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) at Opera Square in Accra, bringing the number of shops to about 70. The latest showdown is part of GUTA's plan to cripple Nigerian businesses in the nation's capital. Nigerian businesses at the Tip Toe Lane at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle are believed to be the next in line, as it was gathered that GUTA plans to lock up the Nigerian shops in the area today. The national president of the Nigerian Union of Traders Association in Ghana (NUTAG), Chukwuemeka Nnaji, has advised his members to close their shops today to avoid the destruction of their goods and businesses. Meanwhile, the timely intervention of police officers and the Nigerian Mission in Ghana averted a major clash between members of GUTA and NUTAG yesterday.

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Following the delay in the commencement of negotiations on the consequential adjustment of the minimum wage at the state levels nationwide, organized labor will meet with state chapters of the Joint Public Service Negotiating Councils (JPSNC) latest by next week, to discuss the next line of action. JPSNC had met with its state chapters in Abuja where they urged governors of the 36 states of the federation to immediately commence the payment of N30,000 new minimum wage with effect from April 18. The Chairman of JPSNC, Simon Anchaver, who had addressed journalists at the end of the consultative meeting, said the union resolved that all states should immediately commence the payment of N30,000 to all the affected workers while the grey areas of the consequential adjustment were being sorted out. He added that the national headquarters of the JPSNC would be sending officers to supervise the negotiations at the state level. But the General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Musa Lawal, told reporters that none of the states had started the negotiations as at last week. He, however, said labor would wait till next week before summoning its state branches to decide on what to do to compel states to commence negotiations.

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The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has given possible reasons why widespread theft of Nigeria's crude oil and refined petroleum products may not end soon. NEITI, which recently disclosed that approximately 488.6 million barrels of crude oil and 4.2 billion liters of refined petroleum products worth $40.06 billion and $1.84 billion respectively were lost by the country between 2009 and 2018, explained that a number of existing reasons and challenges suggest the practice could go on for a while. It hinted that already, the numbers for stolen oil in the first quarter of 2019, surpassed the total volume stolen in 2018 alone, by about 30 percent, adding that the final figures for 2019 could be higher. However, it explained that the factors which suggest oil theft may go on for long in Nigeria were the lack of adequate metering devices at appropriate oil production points, positive markets for refined and stolen crude oil, poor legal systems to punish culprits of oil theft, as well as the size and remote positions of Nigeria's petroleum infrastructure which makes it difficult to secure. NEITI stated that parts of the solution to tackling oil theft in the country would be to take advantage of current technology to monitor and track Nigeria's crude oil from production facilities to the point of sale. It also noted that the legal framework would need to be strengthened, "because current provisions of the law are clearly not sufficient to provide deterrence for beneficiaries of stolen crude." "Ultimately, an effective strategy to combat crude theft would require multilateral actions, at the international level, to complement routine legal, regulatory and law enforcement activities by national institutions. "Nigeria currently relies on operators to provide data on crude production and crude losses. These figures are not independently verified by government agencies. The situation creates opportunities for possible understatement of production or export figures, which may simply be attributed to theft and vandalism," it said. According to the organization: "In terms of the size and extent of the infrastructure from which crude oil is stolen, Nigeria has about 4,441 kilometers (km) length of pipelines conveying crude oil and 5,120km for refined products.

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The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said it is expanding and integrating gas pipeline networks in the country to meet the unprecedented demand of the substance. The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, who was represented at an event by the Managing Director, National Engineering and Technical Company (NETCO), Mrs. Kate Iheme, said the corporation remains the chief enabler of the Nigerian economy. He said with ongoing reforms, the NNPC was focused on transforming from a traditional oil and gas entity into an integrated energy outfit with interest in power generation and transmission. Kyari said: "It is common knowledge that NNPC is expanding and integrating gas pipeline network systems to meet the unprecedented domestic gas demand nationwide. "Towards this end, significant progress has been recorded in the execution of some key on-going gas pipeline infrastructure projects like the Escravos Lagos Pipelines System (ELPs II) and the 0B3, among other gas infrastructure projects. Az"Before now, the corporation had also completed the repair of the vandalized 20-inch ELPS-A pipeline, thereby ensuring gas supply to gas-fired power plants and also supply into the West African Gas Pipeline." The GMD added that the NNPC downstream entities namely, the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), the Nigerian Pipelines and Storage Company (NPSC), NNPC Retail and NNPC Shipping, had also enhanced petroleum products supply and distribution nationwide. "The result is a sanitized fuel supply and distribution network which has thus far banished the ugly episodes of petroleum products scarcity and snaky fuel queues across the country. "With reliable fuel supply system emplaced, commuters, businesses, transporters, and other stakeholders can now engage in fruitful commercial endeavors without the perennial monster of fuel scarcity.

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