BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Oil marketers to fix pump price; Nigeria records 42% job loss; See other stories that made our pick 

Hello, and welcome to Business Roundup this week. Here, we bring you highlights of events that happened during the week -from the capital market, mainstream business activities while not forgetting the tech/economy build up.

Here are the Headlines:

AfDB’s support for Nigeria rises to $5bn 42% of Nigerians lost their jobs to COVID-19 –NBS Nigeria-Brazil partnership to lift agriculture with $1.2bn Nigerian govt removes fuel price cap, gives marketers licence to fix price

Summary:

The entire portfolio of the African Development Bank (AfDB), made up of 61 operations, climbed from $4.5 billion to $5 billion between March and December last year. The multilateral lender made this known on Friday at the approval of Nigeria’s Country Strategy Paper 2020-2024 by its board of directors.

“Of the total active operations, 29 were in the public sector, with a commitment of $2bn (43 per cent) and 32 non-sovereign operations with a total commitment of $3bn, equivalent to 57 per cent of the total portfolio,” the bank said. Read more here

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has declared that 42 per cent of the respondents it surveyed in its newly released COVID-19 Impact Monitoring report were not currently working due to the coronavirus outbreak.

NBS noted that the survey was carried out from 20th April to 11th May at a time a federally mandated lockdown was in force in the country.

The consequences of the pandemic were most telling on the service, commerce and agriculture sectors, the report stated, while 79 per cent of respondents claimed that their total household income has decreased since the middle of March. Read more here

The Nigerian government has declared that a new initiative named Green Imperative valued at $1.2 billion, under the Nigeria-Brazil Bilateral Agriculture Development Programme, will revolutionise the agriculture sector in the country. Lai Mohammed, the Information and Culture Minister, gave the revelation at a joint media conference he anchored alongside Sabo Nanono, the Minister of Agriculture, in Abuja Thursday.

The programme, a product of Nigeria’s resolution in June 2016 to partake in Brazil’s Government-to-Government More Food International Programme, will be executed between five to ten years and bankrolled by the Development Bank of Brazil and Deutsche Bank, according to Mr. Mohammed. Read more here

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: CBN forecasts contraction; Nigeria’s Monetary Policy Rate falls; See other stories that made our pick

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) on Thursday removed the cap on the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) and gave oil marketers the licence to fix the price of the commodity.

In a document titled, “Market Based Pricing Regime for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) Regulations, 2020,” and signed by its Executive Secretary, Abdulkadir Saidu, the agency said the price of PMS would be determined by market forces henceforth. Read more here

On NSE ROUNDUP: Market sheds N118bn on strong negative sentiments

The market was largely bearish this week as several investors were intent on cashing out their investments, consequently putting up large volumes of stocks for sale.

A depreciation of well over N154 billion was posted on Friday alone and the loss for the week would have been heftier if not for the gains recorded in the first few days that helped temper the loss.

All the key market performance indicators closed lower. A negative market breadth was recorded this week as 39 losers emerged against 26 gainers. The All Share Index (ASI) and the Market Capitalisation fell by 1% and 0.90% respectively. While the former closed at 25,016.30 basis points, the latter closed at N13.050 trillion. Read more here

Thanks for joining the roundup this week. See you next week for another serving of Business Roundup. Don’t forget, for the latest news and updates from around the globe, keep reading Ripples Nigeria.

Opinions