BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Binance to exit Nigerian market; FG suspends expatriate levy scheme; Other stories

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

Here are the Headlines

• Customs gives importers 90-day grace to regularize import duty on vehicles

• FG suspends implementation of EEL scheme

• Binance to exit Nigerian market, ends Naira transactions, others March 8

• GTBank, First Bank in trouble with Ghanaian govt over fraudulent forex documentations, others

Summary

The Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) has announced a 90-day window for regularising import duties on specific categories of vehicles.

The Customs said it is acting under the directive of the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun.

This development was contained in a statement signed by its Public Relations Officer, Abdullahi Maiwada, on Sunday.

The Bank of Ghana has suspended the Foreign Exchange trading licenses of Guaranty Trust Bank Ghana Limited and FBN Bank Ghana Limited (FBN) for one month over series of infractions.

The one-month suspension by the Ghanaian apex bank will take effect from March 18, 2024 and is in accordance with Section 11 (2) of the Foreign Exchange Act 2006 (Act 723).

A statement from the Central bank said the suspension became necessary following various breaches of the foreign exchange market regulations, including fraudulent documentation.

The Federal Government has suspended the implementation of the recently enacted Expatriate Employment Levy by the Federal Ministry of Interior.

The President of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines, and Agriculture, Dele Kelvin Oye, disclosed this in a statement on Friday.

President Bola Tinubu launched the Expatriate Employment Levy (EEL) last Tuesday in Abuja.

The ongoing face-off between global crypto trading platform, Binance and the Federal Government has taken a fresh twist following the platform’s resolve to stop all transactions and trading in Nigeria’s currency from March 8.

In a statement posted on its website on Tuesday, Binance also announced that it would stop supporting withdrawals after Friday and any remaining balances in the Nigerian currency would be automatically converted into Tether – a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the United States dollar.

The crypto exchange added that it would cease support for naira deposits after 14:00 UTC today (Tuesday)

The American multinational technology conglomerate, Meta, has suffered a major outage with Facebook and Instagram apps reportedly experiencing downtime.

Many users in Nigeria have reported their inability to access their accounts with various error prompts upon repeated attempts.

The problem is also reported across the world with millions experiencing difficulties in the bid to access their accounts on the platforms.

ON NGX ROUND UP: Equities Market ends week on high as investors gain N562bn

Investors in the Nigerian equities market went home with N562 billion at the close of trading on Friday.

This followed the rise in the market capitalization to N57.2 trillion from N56.7 trillion after five hours of trading today.

Similarly, the All-Share Index (ASI) increased to 101,330.85 from 100,335.30 recorded by the bourse on Thursday.

ON TECH SCENE: Apple, Bolt, Qonto, Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Accenture, Udacity, Buildnow, Fawry, RemotePass, OpenAI, Elon Musk are some of the names that made the headlines this week.

The European Commission has imposed a historic fine of $1.95 billion (€1.8 billion) on Apple for breaching EU antitrust rules in the music streaming sector on its App Store, exceeding earlier forecasts.

Also, The Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, has announced the selection of 270,000 fellows for the program’s second phase.

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