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BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Fuel scarcity bites, as NNPC begs; Bitcoin investors lose N33.79tr in 4 days; Other stories

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BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Nigeria to disconnect Togo and Benin; China displaces America. 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 to the mainstream business activities, while not forgetting the tech/economy build up.

Here are the Headlines:

  • Bitcoin investors lose N33.79tr in 4 days
  • Nigeria’s economy grows by 3.98%, to what it was pre-Buhari era
  • NNPC calls for patience over fuel scarcity
  • Nigeria’s inflation rate reverses, drops to 15.6% in January

Summary:

The value of Bitcoin has dropped by -0.47 percent in the last 24 hours with the most popular cryptocurrency falling below $40,000 on Saturday.

The digital asset dropped to $39,669.90 earlier on Saturday and later hit $40,454.76 following an upward swing in value. It, however, dropped to $40,022.73 a few hours later.

This decline in value caused Bitcoin holders to lose N33.79 trillion ($81.27 billion) in four days following the drop in market capitalisation from $840.25 billion to $758.98 billion on February 16.

The Nigerian economy has made an improvement by 3.98%, similar to what it was before the Muhammadu Buhari administration came to power.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says Nigeria’s GDP grew by 3.98% in Q4 2021, sustaining a positive trajectory.

NBS disclosed this in its latest GDP report published on Thursday. The latest figure shows that Nigeria ended all four quarters of 2021 on a positive note.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited on Wednesday urged Nigerians to exercise patience as the corporation works assiduously to restore normal supply and distribution of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) across the country.

The NNPC Group Managing Director, Mele Kyari stated this when appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (Downstream).

He said: “We regret this situation. It is completely unavoidable, we didn’t see it coming. We apologise to Nigerians. We didn’t see this coming.”

Nigeria’s inflation rate dropped marginally to 15.60 percent year-on-year in January 2022.

This is 0.87 percent points lower than the rate recorded in January 2021 (16.47) percent and also a drop when compared to 15.63% recorded in December 2021.

This shows that the headline inflation rate slowed down in January when compared to the same month in the previous year and also previous month.

On NSE ROUNDUP: Shareholders gain N20.39bn as Julius Berger leads trading

Shareholders at the Nigerian capital market went home with N20.39 billion following the rise in equity capitalisation to N25.40 trillion at the close of business on Friday.

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Nigerian govt’s debts to workers hit N8.7tr; CBN targets $200bn from non-oil exports; Other stories

This represented a 0.08 percent growth in shareholders’ total investment in the bourse from N25.38 trillion posted on Thursday.

The All-Share Index was up by 37.84 basis points to close at 47,140.48 compared to 47,102.64 reported the previous day.

Investors traded 424.69 million shares worth N6.52 billion in 4,601 deals on Friday.

On the tech scene this week, Flutterwave, BimaLab, Zindi, Meeula, MTN, Earnipay and CrowdForce were some of the names that made the headlines this week.

Fintech king Flutterwave got all of us talking after closing a US$250 million Series D funding that tripled the startup’s valuation from $1bn to $3bn.

Also, Meeula, a Nigeria-based tech-solution startup, during the week launched its venture as an e-card domain.

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