Operators and workers have said massive job losses in food and beverage companies are expected in the coming weeks.

A lot of factors such as access to foreign exchange, unavailability of raw materials and the need to observe social distancing in the factories were responsible for the decision of the management of some companies in the sector to lay off workers.

The acting Director-General of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Ambrose Oruche, said that breweries were going through a hard time because most of their warehouses were loaded with goods they could not sell.

This is because their major customers bars, hotels, clubs have not been opened for business in the past two months.

He explained that vendors that were dependent on the food and beverage companies had also been impacted by the poor state of business.

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The Federal Government has said oil marketers are not free to fix the price of petrol.

A statement in Abuja on Sunday by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency said the government had not conferred on marketers the power to fix petrol price.

The PPPRA stressed that the new market-based pricing regime was still in force.

The Executive Secretary, PPPRA, Abdulkadir Saidu, said the attention of the agency was drawn to the several media reports that claimed that the government had removed the price cap on PMS and had given marketers the freedom to fix the price of the commodity and sell above the stipulated price.

He described this as a misconception, adding that the implementation of a market-based pricing regime was first announced by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, in March.

He said the published regulation does not confer on marketers the power to fix prices for the product as they deem fit, but rather guiding prices would be advised by the PPPRA according to market realities.

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Luxury carmaker Bentley is to cut 1,000 jobs in the UK, about a quarter of its workforce.

The company, which makes its cars in Crewe, is expected to offer workers the chance to take voluntary redundancy.

The move comes as the car industry faces a sharp drop in sales due to coronavirus. Bentley has also struggled to be profitable in recent years.

Bentley, which is owned by Volkswagen, declined to comment but is expected to make a formal announcement on Today.

Last month, boss Adrian Hallmark said that a quarter of the company's workers had been furloughed due to the lockdown while another quarter were working from home.

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Clothing retailer Gap has reported a loss close to $1bn due to store closures because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The company was $932m (£740m) in the red for the three months to May, compared with a profit of $227m in the same period last year.

It comes as Gap wrote off the value of the goods it holds by more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

The firm's shares were down by more than 8% in after-hours trade.

Gap's chief executive Sonia Syngal said with net sales falling 43% in the period they continued to reflect “material declines in May as a result of closures” but added that online demand was improving.

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Facebook Inc on Thursday said it will start labeling Russian, Chinese and other state-controlled media organizations, and later this summer will block any ads from such outlets that target U.S. users.

According to a partial list Facebook the world’s biggest social network will apply the label to Russia’s Sputnik, Iran’s Press TV and China’s Xinhua News. The company will apply the label to about 200 pages at the outset.

Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher in an interview said Facebook will not label any U.S.-based news organizations, as it determined that even U.S. government-run outlets have editorial independence.

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Sources said the Bank of Japan is likely to maintain this month its projection that the economy will gradually recover from the damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic in the latter half of this year.

The BOJ’s optimism reflects its growing conviction that the world’s third-largest economy hit bottom in April or May, when lockdown steps kept citizens home and businesses shut, said four sources familiar with the central bank’s thinking.

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An email by a Goldman Sachs Group Inc employee about his experiences of racial injustice and criticizing managers at the Wall Street bank for not supporting junior bankers from diverse backgrounds went viral at the firm this week.

The email by Frederick Baba, a managing director at the bank who is black, coincides with other Wall Street executives and companies speaking out against racial inequality after the death of an African American man, George Floyd, during an arrest by a white police officer who held a knee on his neck in Minneapolis on May 25.

On Tuesday, Bank of America Corp pledged $1 billion to help communities address economic and racial inequality. Goldman Sachs on Wednesday created a $10 million fund for racial equity. The CEOs of JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup and Wells Fargo & Co have also made statements denouncing racism and discrimination.

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President Rodrigo Duterte renewed on Friday a threat to kill drug dealers after the Philippines seized 756kg (1,667lbs) of crystal methamphetamine just a day after the United Nations found "near impunity" in the drug war that has defined his administration.

The drugs, with a market value that police estimated at 5.1 billion pesos ($102m), was one of the biggest seizures in recent years, and Duterte said it was proof that the Philippines had become a transhipment point for illegal drugs.

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The mines minister told Reuters that Guinea’s government approved on Thursday a basic agreement for the development of its giant Simandou iron ore project by a consortium representing Chinese, French and Singaporean interests.

The consortium - which includes Société Minière de Boké (SMB) and Singapore’s Winning Shipping as well as Guinean government interests - won a $14 billion tender last November to develop blocks 1 and 2 of the largest known deposit of its kind, holding more than 2 billion tonnes of high-grade ore.

Mines Minister Abdoulaye Magassouba said its development agreement was approved on Tuesday and they will proceed to sign it in the coming days.

The West African nation has sought to develop the Simandou deposit for decades, but the project was mired in protracted legal disputes and high costs curbed interest.

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Secretary to the Treasury Fredson Yamba on Thursday said Zambia is reviewing its 2020 budget after a reduction in revenue as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors.

The ministry of finance in April said Zambia’s budgeted revenue is estimated to fall short of target by close to 20% as a result of economic adjustments due to COVID-19.

Yamba in a statement said Planned expenditure will be adjusted through the review process in line with revised revenue projections, but social spending would remain a priority.

He said one of the key outcomes of this process is the containment of the 2020 fiscal deficit within manageable limits.

Zambia’s central bank projected in May gross domestic product (GDP) would shrink 2.6% in 2020, its first economic contraction in more than 20 years. GDP grew 1.9% in 2019.

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