Business News

Wednesday, 24 August 2022 07:20

Nigeria spent $11bn to import sugar, plastics, pharmaceuticals in 2 years - Report

Plastics, pharmaceuticals and sugar worth $10.98bn were imported into Nigeria between 2020 and 2021, according to data from the International Trade Centre. Within the time under review, the country spent $1.82bn on sugar products, $4.21bn on pharmaceutical products, and $4.95bn on plastic products. Countries from which these products came from included: China, Korea Republic, Saudi Arabia, India, United States of America, India, Netherlands, Denmark, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, and Switzerland, among others. According to the ITC, sugars and sugar confectionery products that were imported included cane or beet sugar and chemically pure sucrose; chemically pure lactose, maltose, glucose and fructose;…

Wednesday, 24 August 2022 07:16

Naira continues to fall at parallel market, approaches N700 to $1

The naira, on Tuesday, fell to N692 per dollar at the parallel market amid the lingering scarcity of the greenback. The figure signifies a depreciation of N9 or 1.3 percent compared to the N683 it traded last week. Bureaux De Change operators (BDCs) said they purchased the greenback at N685/$, made a gain of N7 and then sold at N692. According to the traders, the persistent naira depreciation is due to increased demand by customers and the scarcity of the dollar. “I know a trader who wants to buy goods from China. He has been looking for $40,000 in this…

Wednesday, 24 August 2022 07:10

Online theft is on the rise. Here’s what you should do

Between 2008 and 2021, the FBI recorded a 207% increase in cybercrime reports, with losses hitting almost $7 billion last year. This is being driven by a highly professionalized cyber-threat supply chain that is enabling threat actors with little know-how and limited resources to imperil personal, economic and national security. The bad news is that cybercrime innovation hasn't stopped. According to a new report from HP Wolf Security in the future we could see emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing be abused to line the pockets of criminal groups and further nation-state goals. The key to resistance will be…

Tuesday, 23 August 2022 07:11

Oil companies’ debts to Nigerian banks rise to N5.93trn - Report

The combined bank borrowing to oil firms operating in the downstream and upstream subsectors of the Nigerian oil and gas industry was N5.93tn as of June 2022, according to data from Central Bank of Nigeria. While operators in the downstream, natural gas and crude oil refining subsector owed banks N4.28tn, operators in the upstream and services subsectors were indebted to banks to the tune of N1.65tn. This shows an increase of N250bn from the total debt of N5.68tn in December 2021. The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria had, in March, raised the alarm over the huge…

Tuesday, 23 August 2022 07:02

Why social media is a blessing and a curse for business leaders

Whether you run a Fortune 500 company, a startup or a small business, it's strategic table stakes for leaders to use social media to their advantage. As a vehicle for promotion, advertising, engagement and recruitment, it has undeniable business benefits, but are the professional advantages driving us to ignore the personal disadvantages? As the leader of a mental health company, I find it hard to separate the two. I'm going to use this article to weigh the pros of using social media authentically while also shedding light on the negative impact it can sometimes have on mental health, to help…

Monday, 22 August 2022 06:57

Banks flout CBN directive, reject lower denomination, old dollar bills

Despite repeated warnings by the Central Bank of Nigeria, commercial banks are still in the habit of rejecting old United State dollar bills, Daily trust investigations revealed. A number of the new generation banks visited within the Central Business District of Abuja rejected outright a ten dollar bill and would only take about two hundred dollars’ worth of fifty dollar bills. Two branches of Guaranty Trust Bank turned down fifty-dollar bills claiming that they were trying to reduce the stock of smaller bills. “We cannot take smaller notes alone, it has to be mixed and even at that, we cannot…

Monday, 22 August 2022 06:48

The first 3 steps after someone makes a business introduction for you

At the foundation of all business is connecting with people. Whether it's with a journalist, an investor, a potential partner or anyone else. The best way to connect with people is through an introduction. You can always cold call someone but having a trusted mutual connection introduce you will always be more effective. We already talked about how to ask for an intro and how to make one, but what should you do once you get that email from a friend introducing you to someone? Here are the first three things you should do: Express gratitude for the intro By…

Saturday, 20 August 2022 07:00

Unclaimed dividends in Nigeria’s capital market are in excess of N177bn. This is what SEC is doing about it

Securities and Exchange Commission, on Friday, announced that the unclaimed dividends at Nigeria’s capital market so far computed increased from N168bn in 2020 to N177bn in 2021. Director-General, SEC, Lamido Yuguda, disclosed this in Abuja while speaking on some of the outcomes of the second Capital Market Committee meeting held recently in Abuja. Responding to a question on the amount of unclaimed dividends at the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Yuguda said, “The unclaimed dividends that we have as at the end of last year was about N177bn. “And, unfortunately, this was an increase over the number at the end of 2020,…

Saturday, 20 August 2022 06:59

Price of cooking gas increased by 122 percent in one year - NBS

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says the price of a 12.5kg of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), better known as cooking gas, has increased by 122.15 percent year-on-year. By implication, Nigerians paid an average price of N9,824.07 for refilling a 12.5kg cylinder of cooking gas in July 2022 compared to N4,422.32 in July 2021. The NBS said this in its latest report on liquefied petroleum gas (cooking gas) price watch for July 2022. According to the report, the average price for refilling a 12.5kg of cooking gas increased to N9,824.07 in July 2022 from N9,485.91 in June 2022, representing a…

Friday, 19 August 2022 07:38

Emirates to suspend Nigeria flights from Sept over trapped funds

Dubai's Emirates will suspend flights to Nigeria from next month over an inability to repatriate funds from Africa's most populous nation, the airline said on Thursday. The decision highlights the difficulties faced by international carriers that fly to Nigeria, which is one of the biggest markets in Africa for several of them. The country has restricted access to foreign currency for imports and for investors seeking to repatriate their profits due to a shortage of dollars. Nigeria gets about 90% of its foreign exchange from oil, but is struggling to produce due to pipeline theft and years of under-investment. The…

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Friday, 19 August 2022 07:28

The secret to building a successful and lasting business

"How useful is what I do?" It's a question that is so simple on paper, yet so freaking difficult to answer in real life. The usefulness of your product or service is a metric that's difficult to quantify. As a result, a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders don't bother trying to measure it at all. Instead, they'll substitute a backward-looking statistic like revenue, or worse, they'll rely on vanity metrics that don't mean anything. Then they'll find that revenue can suddenly evaporate one day with no explanation. Or they'll use false positives as justification for poor decisions on spend.…

Thursday, 18 August 2022 05:59

Nigerians to earn more on savings deposits as CBN increases interest rate

Central Bank of Nigeria has raised the minimum interest rate on Naira savings deposits from 0.15 percent to 4.2 per cent. The new directive took effect from August 1, 2022. The bank in a circular dated August 15, 2022, and signed by Haruna Mustafa, director of the banking supervision department, said the rate has been revised from 10 per cent to 30 per cent of the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR). In a bid to address inflation, the bank in July raised the benchmark interest rate to 14 per cent from 13 per cent, making it the second consecutive time the…

Thursday, 18 August 2022 05:57

Electricity companies have combined bank debts of N836bn - Report

Power generation and distribution companies owe Nigerian banks N836.09bn amid the problems plaguing the sector since it was privatised over eight years ago. This is according to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s June 2022 data obtained by The Punch. While power generation firms and independent power producers owed banks N562.19bn, power transmission and distribution firms were indebted to the tune of N273.89bn. In November 2013, the nation’s distribution and generation companies were privatised through the Bureau of Public Enterprises, fetching about $3.2bn for the Federal Government. The Discos and Gencos were sold for $1.7bn and $1.5bn respectively. The Federal Government…

Thursday, 18 August 2022 05:55

Entering a new market? Harness the power of familiarity

When AACo hired me as an advisor, they had a big problem to solve: No one in the US had interest in their product, Australian Wagyu beef, even though they were the world's largest producer of the delicacy and had won some very prestigious global competitions with it. That unfamiliarity caused steak-lovers in the US to stick to the much better-known USDA Prime and Japanese Wagyu, to the detriment of AACo's sales. The company's specific challenge reflects a critical obstacle any innovator faces when introducing their product or idea: Inertia, wherein people habitually favor what they know at the expense…

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