Determined to tap into the huge business opportunities in the West Africa sub-region, the West African Insurers Companies Association (WAICA) says it will use its international educational Conference this year to promote investment opportunities in Africa, Nigeria as a focus. Secretary General of WAICA Mr. William Coker, said the conference with the theme: ‘An Integrated and Harmonized Insurance Industry in West Africa,’ will take place in Lagos, November 24 – 26. According to him, “The sub regional body is keying into the regional integration efforts of ECOWAS heads of government and insurance as a critical player in the economy must take its pride of place in the scheme of things”. “If we are promoting the concept of a global village, the insurance industry in the West African sub region needs to be seen as front runners in promoting efforts at regional integration. Charity must begin at home” he added. The three day educational Conference will feature papers which will be presented by two erudite scholars. According to the programme of events released by Mr. Rotimi Fashola, Chairman of Local Organizing Committee (LOC), Dr. Ibrahim Bocar BA, Commissioner, Macro-economic Policy, Ecowas, Abuja, will give the goodwill message while the Co-ordinating Minister of the economy and Honourable Minister of Finance, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is expected to give the keynote address and declare the Conference open on Monday, November 25, 2013.
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Nigeria’s federal government has described recent statement by World Bank Country Director, Marie-Francoise Marie-Nelly that 100 million Nigerians are living in destitution or extreme poverty as “spurious claim” that “is astonishing on a number of levels.” In a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday, Dr. Nwanze Okidegbe, Chief Economic Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan said the claim contradicts the position of the World Bank on the level of poverty in Nigeria as declared by Bank’s Vice President for Africa, Makhtar Diop, in May 2013. The Chief Economic Adviser recalled that Diop had declared during the visit that the rate of poverty has fallen under President Jonathan administration from 48 per cent to 46 percent. “Given our current population of about 170 million people, the Country Director’s imagery of 100 million Nigerian destitutes seems to be based on a much higher poverty rate than that of her boss. The question that arises from this absurdity therefore is: who is right?,” queried Okidegbe.
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Standard Bank Securities (SBG Securities), a stock broking unit of Standard Bank Group, and Ünlü Securities, a division of Ünlü & Co of Turkey, will be collaborating on their equities research product to cover listed Turkish equities. “We firmly believe that to do this, SBG Securities has to attract and hire the best sector specialists to be able to provide our customers with new insights to make investment decisions,” said Marc Ter Mors, Standard Bank Group’s Global Head of Equity Research.
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Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has said Nigeria spends over N1.6tn ($10bn) yearly on importation of wheat, rice, sugar and fish. He spoke on Tuesday in Abuja at the 2013 Korea International Cooperation Agency Alumni Seminar Session in Nigeria. Adesina said research had shown that 43 percent of under-five children in Nigeria suffered stunted growth, compared to 39 percent for all developing countries, 26 percent in Ghana, 25 percent in Benin, 29 percent in Botswana, Burkina Faso and Cameroon and 33 percent in Kenya. According to him, Nigeria ranks 158th out of 182 countries in the Human Development Index, with life expectancy of 52 years; risk of maternal death of one in 18; and under-five mortality rate of 186 per 1,000 live births. “Nigeria’s stunting prevalence puts it as the 32nd highest out of 136 countries. Nigeria has the third absolute number of stunted children, with 41 percent of children under the age of five stunted, 23 percent underweight and 14 percent wasted,” he said. Although he acknowledged that overall prevalence of stunting and underweight had been decreasing over the past 20 years, Adesina pointed out that the progress in Nigeria might not be sufficient to meet the Millennium Development Goals of halving the problem by 2015.
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The Nigerian economy needs growth that will impact on the people, even as the government seeks double digit Gross Domestic Product, GDP, said Finance Minister & Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Meanwhile, former chairman, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Chief Economist, Jim O’Neill, has again predicted that Nigeria’s economy may grow by 10 per cent if the privatised power sector ends daily electricity cuts. It will be recalled that it was Goldman Sachs that in 2004 projected that Nigeria will become one of the 20 largest economies in the world by 2025, which gave birth to Nigeria’s Vision 20: 2020. It was the same company that coined the term BRIC, which ranked Brazil, Russia, India and China as the emerging economies. Speaking at the FBN Capital third investor conference held in Lagos yesterday, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala said: “The Nigerian economy has the capacity to grow at a double digit rate of 10 per cent per annually.” Minister of Trade , Industry & Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga and O’Neill also corroborated Okonjo-Iweala’s view. In different presentations at the conference, the three main-tained that Nigeria’s popula-tion of 160 million and vast resources provide oppor-tunities that can make the country’s economy expand at a double digit rate.
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For the second time this month, President Goodluck Jonathan has failed to present the 2014 budget to the National Assembly He was expected to present the budget today at the National Assembly. Jonathan’s decision to defer the presentation of the budget was contained in a letter to the Senate President, Mr. David Mark, dated 18 November. Jonathan had requested the Senate to grant him the slot on 19 November, 2013 to address a joint session of the two chambers. The president cited the disparity in the benchmark agreed by the two chambers as reason for his inability to present the budget. He said the budget would be presented as soon as the Senate and House of Representatives harmonised their position on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework. The Senate has approved the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) based on a benchmark of 76.5 dollars per barrel while the House of Representatives used a benchmark of 79 dollars per barrel. “ it is not feasible for me to present the budget in the absence of a harmonised position on the MTEF. “In the circumstance, it has become necessary to defer the presentation of the 2014 budget to a joint session of the National Assembly until such a time when both chambers may have harmonised their positions on MTEF. “It is my hope that this would be within the shortest possible time,” Jonathan added.
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VENTURES AFRICA – MainOne, a telecom service and network solutions provider, has announced plans to launch a $32 million data centre in Nigeria by mid 2014, to carter for the fledging information and communication market in country. “We’re moving away from just being the submarine cable provider to being a full service connectivity provider,” said the company’s CEO, Funke Opeke “As you move data and connectivity, people need places to host that data, so the data center business is a natural evolution for service providers globally.”
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Oil traders accused of shady deals in Nigeria’s crude sales by a Swiss-based Non- Government Organisation, the Berne Declaration, may have approached their lawyers on the possibilities of seeking redress for what they described as “libelous publication” by the NGO. Sources privy to the move hinted that “The Swiss-based researchers from a distance published what can be likened to a ‘beer parlor gist’ on Nigeria oil and gas sector based on their vague understanding of the unique Nigerian business environment. This explains why they hurriedly lifted unverified figures from equally disputed sources like the Ribadu and Farouk reports, but we are determined to teach them some legal lessons,” the source intoned. The Berne Declaration had alleged that some local and international oil traders were colluding with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, to defraud the country of billions of dollars, thus sparking off enquiries into the country’s crude oil sales.
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The world’s biggest carmaker, Toyota, has raised its profit forecast as the yen’s weakness and cost-cutting measures helped lift its earnings. It now expects to make a net profit of 1.67tn yen ($16.9bn; £10.5bn) in the financial year to 31 March 2014, up from an earlier forecast of 1.48tn yen. Toyota upped the forecast as it reported a net profit of 1tn yen for the six months to the end of September. The results are in contrast with Nissan which cut its profit outlook recently. Toyota said it expects to sell 9.1 million vehicles in the current financial year and generate a revenue of 25tn yen during the period. Japanese carmakers, including Toyota, rely heavily on sales in foreign markets. As a result, any fluctuation in the currency markets has an impact on their profitability.
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U.S. stocks are grossly overpriced, according to asset management firm Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo (GMO) & Company, which estimates fair value for the S&P 500 Index at 1,100 - or almost 40 percent below current levels. In a quarterly letter published on Monday, Ben Inker, co-head of global asset allocation at GMO said the expected rate of return on the stock market index is minus 1.3 percent per year, adjusted for inflation, for the next seven years. "[The] U.S. stock market is trading at levels that do not seem capable of supporting the type of returns that investors have gotten used to receiving from equities," Inker wrote in a report titled "Breaking News! U.S. Equity Market Overvalued!" "Combining the current P/E [price-to-earnings ratio] of over 19 for the S&P 500 and a return on sales about 42 percent over the historical average, we would get an estimate that the S&P 500 is approximately 75 percent overvalued," he said.
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