BUSINESS ROUNDUP: FG’s Enugu coal mines revival, GDP’s increase in Q3 2019; see other stories that made the pick

Hello, it’s Sunday. Welcome to this week’s Business Roundup. Read through to see some of the top events that happened during the week.

Headlines:

• Nigerian govt moves to revive Enugu coal mines
• Air Peace boss denies allegations of fraud by US
• Nigeria’s GDP grows 2.28% in Q3 2019
• Employees threaten to shut down First Bank over plans to sack 1,000 workers

Summary:

The Federal Government has said it is ready to revive the coal mines in Enugu State so as to enable them contribute to the socio-economic development of the country.

The Minister of State, Mines and Steel Development, Dr. Uchechukwu Ogah, revealed this on Friday in Enugu when he visited the state governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi at the Government House, Enugu, with a team from the ministry. Read more.

The Chairman/CEO of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, on Saturday denied allegations of bank and money laundering filed against him by the United States Justice Department.

The US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Georgia had, earlier, on Friday accused Onyema of money laundering “for moving more than $20 million from Nigeria through U.S bank accounts in a scheme involving false documents for the purchase of airplanes.” Read more.

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: CBN, others digging AMCON’s grave, Disney moves to rival Netflix; see other stories that made our pick

Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 2.28 percent in the third quarter of 2019, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.

The NBS, in the latest report published on its website, observed that when compared with the third quarter of 2018, which had a growth rate of 1.81%, the real GDP growth rate for the third quarter of 2019 indicates an increase of 0.47% points. Read more.

Operations of one of Nigeria’s oldest banks, First Bank Nigeria may be disrupted if it goes ahead with an alleged plan to retrench about 1000 of its works force.

The National Union of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions Employees (NUBIFIE) has vowed to shut down its operations nationwide, if the plan materializes.

On NSE ROUNDUP: Mixed fortunes trail Stock Market.

The Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, recorded mixed fortunes across key market indices this week as performance parameters variously took negative and positive directions.

The All Share Index (ASI) climbed by 0.52% to 26,991.42 basis points, up from the 26,851.68 recorded the week before. However, Market Capitalisation dipped by 0.34% to close at N13.027 trillion, compared to the N13.071 trillion posted last week. Read more.

Meanwhile, on our editorial Business Review segment;

During the week, we reviewed that Nigeria’s movie on-demand sector as it welcomed a new player –nvivoTV. We were curious to ask if the IrokoTV market dominance would help the new nvivoTV scale.

Envivo Communications, in a press release –following the launch, has promised that its product, nvivoTV, would offer diverse short format contents from some of the world’s best content providers, going further to list “locally created original TV series” as part of the packages it would invest in. Will nvivoTV scale? Read more.

Also, in the week, we did an exclusive on the Opay’s recent $120 million funds. Our concern bordered on how it displaced Gokada and MaxNG after receiving $50 million funding from Chinese investors. With $120 million in the bag, will Opay not send yet another business to its grave?

While we were not far from the predictions, Opay launched it OCar, barely 6 hours of the review. Read more.

Good bye and see you next week for yet another fresh serving of Business Roundup. Don’t forget, for the latest news and updates from around the globe, keep reading Ripples Nigeria.

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