Terms
CBN: Naira to fall further in January
Barely five days to the end of the year 2020, the Central Bank of Nigeria has disclosed that a survey carried out by its Statistics Department revealed that the naira is expected to depreciate further in January 2021. The report, titled, ‘December 2020 Business Expectations Survey Report’ added that there might also be a steady rise in interest rate from December till the next six months. The naira witnessed a sharp fall in recent weeks, reaching its lowest on November 30, 2020, when it exchanged for N500/$1. Since then, the dollar has been hovering between N460 and N470. As of Friday, however, one dollar exchanged for 465 in the parallel market. Also, the Nigerian economy had on November 21 slid into its second recession in five years when the economy shrank again in the third quarter. Th...
Millions of Americans risk losing jobless benefits as Donald Trump refuses to sign aid bill
Millions of Americans are about to see their jobless benefits expire on Saturday as U.S. President Donald Trump has so far refused to sign into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, insisting that it did not do enough to help everyday people. Trump stunned Republicans and Democrats alike when he said this week he was unhappy with the massive bill, which provides $892 billion in badly needed coronavirus relief, including extending special unemployment benefits expiring on Dec. 26, and $1.4 trillion for normal government spending. Without Trump’s signature, about 14 million people could lose those extra benefits, according to Labor Department data. A partial government shutdown will begin on Tuesday unless Congress can agree a stop-gap government funding bill before then. Af...
U.S. records 247,403 new coronavirus infections, 3,656 deaths
The daily number of new coronavirus (COVID-19) infections and deaths has hit new highs in the U.S. On Wednesday, December 16, there were 247,403 new infections and 3,656 deaths with confirmed COVID-19 infection registered within the past 24 hours, a data released on Thursday, December 17 by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore said. The highest values before those 233,133 new cases and 3,306 deaths were recorded on December 11, 2020. In total, around 16.9 million people have been proven to be infected with the COVID-19 in the country with around 330 million inhabitants. Since the beginning of the pandemic, no fewer than 307,500 people have died from the COVID-19 pandemic. In absolute terms, that is more than in any other country in the world. The Johns Hopkins University website...
U.S. warns Pacific islands about Chinese bid for undersea cable project
The United States has warned Pacific island nations about security threats posed by a Chinese company’s cut-price bid to build an undersea internet cable, two sources told Reuters, part of an international development project in the region. Huawei Marine, which was recently divested from Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and is now majority-owned by another Chinese firm, submitted bids along with French-headquartered Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), part of Finland’s Nokia, and Japan’s NEC, for the $72.6 million project backed by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB), the sources with direct knowledge of the project details said. The project is designed to improve communications to the island nations of Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and Kiribati. Washington sent a diploma...
NAICOM: Don’t shun insurance despite inflation, harsh business environment
File Photo As businesses and individuals adopt cost reduction measures in response to rising inflation and the harsh business environment, the National Insurance Commission, NAICOM, has charged Nigerians to avoid the tendency to shun insurance of their assets. Commissioner for Insurance, Mr. Sunday Thomas, who gave the charge noted that despite the biting inflation in the country, even as people reduce the cost of expenses, this is not the best of time to reduce insurance consumption. Thomas stated this at a webinar organised by Coronation Insurance Plc in partnership with Access Bank Plc, with the theme: “Managing Business Risks at a Time of Uncertainty.” Thomas, who was represented by Mr. Taiwo Adeoye, Technical Adviser to the Commissioner for Insurance, noted that sometimes the gain in ...
AKK gas pipeline at 15 percent completion – NNPC chief
The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Malam Mele Kyari, says the construction of Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) Gas Pipeline project is currently at 15 per cent completion. Kyari disclosed this at the inspection of the second leg of the project at Karogo community in Igabi Local Government Area, Kaduna State, on Tuesday. “The project is currently at about 15 per cent completion but what is important for us to know is that we are crossing the river Niger, what we call the Ndoni-Aboh river crossing in Rivers and Delta states that will deliver gas from the eastern part to the country into the western corridor. “That means expanding gas supply into the help line and also making gas ready. We are happy that this project is going on and we will deliver it...
TikTok to hide graphic videos behind warning screens
TikTok has unveiled a newly updated set of community guidelines and tools, which include new warning screens on graphic videos, a new text-to-voice accessibility feature, and updated health resources. The update brings new vaccine information which will be added to TikTok’s coronavirus resource hub as well as resources to be shown if people search for certain terms, like those related to self-harm. According to TikTok, the graphic content warning screens are meant to prevent the accidental viewing of content that some might find disturbing. The screen gives two options, letting users either view the clip or skip it entirely. More extreme content is removed from the service entirely, but the new warning labels cover clips that might be allowed for “documentary reasons,” scenes from horror m...
NBS: N319.99 trillion e-payments recorded in Q3 2020
A total volume of 2,781,526,188 transactions valued at N319.99trn was recorded in the third quarter of this year based on data on electronic payment channels in the Nigeria banking sector, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics has said. It disclosed this in its latest Selected Banking Sector Data which focused on sectorial breakdown of credit, e-payment channels and staff strength of Deposit Money Banks. The bureau said Real Time Gross Settlement transfers dominated the volume of transactions recorded. RTGS systems are specialist funds transfer systems where the transfer of money or securities takes place from one bank to any other bank on a real-time and on a gross basis. The NBS said 1,799,199 volume of online transfer transactions valued at N116.06trn were recorded in Q3 2020. In terms of c...
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris jointly named TIME’s ‘Person of the Year’
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were jointly named Time magazine’s 2020 “Person of the Year” on Thursday, chosen from a list of finalists that included the man Biden vanquished at the polls – President Donald Trump. The Democratic former vice president and his running mate, a California senator whose election broke gender and racial barriers, together “offered restoration and renewal in a single ticket,” Time said in a profile of the pair, published online with its announcement. Following the most tumultuous U.S. presidential campaign in modern times, waged in the throes of a deadly pandemic, economic devastation and a strife-torn national reckoning with racism, Biden and Harris prevailed in an election that drew the highest voter turnout in a century....
Jurgen Klopp: I thought VAR was a good idea, but now I’m not so sure
Jurgen Klopp admits he may have changed his mind about the need for VAR in football, after another incident-filled match for his Liverpool side in the Champions League. The Reds’ 1-1 draw with Danish champions FC Midtjylland on Wednesday saw a number of interventions from the video assistant referee. First Midtjylland were awarded a penalty for a foul by Liverpool goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher on Anders Dreyer. The forward had initially been flagged offside by the assistant referee but replays showed, eventually at least, that he had been onside, though there was a lengthy delay as the referee headed to the pitchside monitor to rule on Kelleher’s subsequent challenge. Andreas Scholz converted from the spot to equalise for the home side after Mohamed Salah had opened the scoring. There was m...
Stock market gains N138 billion despite profit taking
The stock market posted positive performance last week despite profit taking by some investors, as it sustained the growth recorded in the previous week. Precisely, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) All-Share Index (ASI) rose 0.7 per cent to close at 35,137.99, while market capitalisation gained N137.5 billion to print at N18.365 trillion. Apart from the NSE ASI index that appreciated, NSE Insurance, NSE ASeM and NSE Oil/Gas indices also went up by 2.61 per cent, 1.56 per cent, 0.19 per cent and 1.71 per cent respectively. Although the gains recorded in the market in November was expected to propel profit taking, some market analysts are still upbeat that the bulls would remain in control till the end of the year. “With the low yield environment in the fixed income space and investors’ cor...
Nigerian National Assembly spends billions of naira on constitution review
The perennial constitution amendment exercise by the National Assembly is characterised by proposals that keep resurfacing despite gulping billions of naira yearly, an analysis has shown. The federal parliament had from the 5th to the current 9th National Assembly made several attempts to amend some provisions of the 1999 Constitution to no avail. At every session, the parliament officially spends N1 billion shared equally between the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are reports that the lawmakers spend more than what is appropriated for the exercise. While some amendments were successful, several others suffered serial failures but kept appearing in new proposals. Considering the huge spending, lawyers and civil society groups have pointed out that no significant amendments ...