BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Fintech startups get CBN breather, Nigeria’s trade deficit hits N1.8trn; 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:

• Court suspends CBN freeze on Fintech startups’ accounts
• Nigeria’s trade deficit widens to N1.8trn in three months
• Naira continues free fall
• FIRS denies plans to tax social media businesses

Summary:

Black market traders appear to have struck gold in recent days, taking advantage of the low liquidity on the foreign currency market as well as Nigerians seeking quick access.

Since the Central Bank of Nigeria imposed stringent regulations on the FX market, black market dealers have had to grow more creative in order to get dollars from the official market or in other ways and they haven’t held back in exploiting any potential gaps. And Thursday was one of those days.

According to Abokifx data, Nigerians seeking easy access to the dollars were forced to pay N540/$1. This was a N5 increase, or 0.94 percent, over the N535.00 paid on Wednesday.

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has said it has no plan to tax companies using the social media to transact business, but confirmed that digital platforms will be brought into the tax net.

The tax agency said the only bill available for social media tax is one which seeks to make Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other digital giants taxpayers within Nigeria.

The Nigerian government has been contemplating introducing the tax bill in the social media circle following claims that Facebook, Twitter and their contemporaries have substantial economic footprint in the country.

Weak demand for Nigerian products increased the trade balance deficit to N1.87 trillion in the second quarter of 2021.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) stated this in its “Foreign Trade Statistics – Q2 2021 obtained on Monday by Ripples Nigeria.

According to the report, Nigeria spent N6.95 trillion on imports but recorded exports worth N5.08 trillion.

Bamboo Systems Technology Limited and Bamboo Systems Tech. Ltd., have received a court order to have the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) unfreeze their accounts.

The Federal High Court, Abuja, placed a temporary unfreeze order on the two companies’ accounts on Tuesday, three weeks after the CBN secured an exparte order against them and three other Fintech startups.

CBN blocked the accounts of Bamboo Systems Technology Limited, Rise Vest Technologies Limited, Bamboo Systems Technology Limited OPNS, CTL/Business Expenses, Chaka Technologies Limited, and Trove Technologies Limited.

On NSE ROUNDUP: Market cap drops by 0.71% as investors lose N145.6bn

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Naira in all-time low, exchanges for N530/$; DPR shuts nine illegal LPG plants; Other stories

Investors at the Nigerian capital market lost N145.65 billion following the crash in the equity capitalization by 0.71 percent on Friday.

The equity capitalization dropped from N20.42 trillion posted the previous day to N20.27 trillion on Friday.

The All Share Index was down by 279.55 basis points to close at 38,921.78 compared to 39,201.33 achieved on Thursday.

Investors traded 154.55 million shares worth N2.26 billion in 3,467 deals today.

On the tech scene this week, we featured stories on fund raisers, venture expansion and updates on various opportunity windows such as the unveiling of participants for Endeavour ScaleUp programme.

On expansion, we tracked the story of Nigeria’s Autochek intent to expand into Kenya and Uganda.

Leading the fund raiser table is Nigeria’s Prospa, closing a $3.8m pre-seed to accelerate growth.

Remarks

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

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