BUSINESS ROUNDUP: FX market ends week with stronger naira to the dollar; Nigeria’s petroleum minister blames fuel subsidy for faulty refineries; 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:                  

• FX market ends week with stronger naira to the dollar
• Nigeria’s exports to African markets drops to a three-year low
• Nigeria’s petroleum minister blames fuel subsidy for faulty refineries
• United States to make second bitcoin sales, as CBN refuses to innovate

 Summary:

The foreign exchange market closed the week with Naira gaining marginally by 0.031 percent after exchanging with the dollar at N410.05 on Friday compared to N410.13 it open the week at the investor and foreign exchange market, according to data from FMDQ exchange.

Also at the black market the naira closed the week on a positive note. The foreign exchange market daily turnover also increase by 179.86 percent to $72.43 at the end of trading on Friday from $25.88 million recorded on Monday. Read more

Nigeria’s exports to key markets in Africa fell to it’s lowest level in three years in 2020.

Data obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Foreign Trade report on Friday indicated that the value of goods that were sold to other countries on the continent dropped to N2.37 trillion. Read more

The Minister of State for Petroleum, Timpreye Sylva, blamed fuel subsidy for the poor state of Nigeria’s refineries. He made this comment while defending the plan to repair the refineries.

He said the reason Nigeria’s refineries are not functioning to full capacity is due to the payment of fuel subsidy, so they must be repaired in order to remove the subsidy. Read more

The United States government is set to make its second bitcoin sales in a month, as it plans to sell off 6.79 bitcoin worth about $353,000 through the country’s General Services Administration (GSA).

Trading on the US bitcoin will hold between March 29 to March 31, 2021. The BTC is from the 70,124 bitcoins held by the government, which are worth $3.7 billion. Most of the bitcoin were possessed through seizures and legal cases which led to asset forfeiture. Read more

 On NSE ROUNDUP: Financial services most active, as Japaul Gold, MRS Oil close week as losers

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Naira value drops by N1.10 to the dollar; Bitcoin market cap slumps after over $7,000 wiped off; Other stories

This week at the stock exchange, investors traded a total turnover of 1.530 billion shares worth N21.311 billion in 20,016 deals, against the previous week’s 2.342 billion shares traded in 20,173 deals and valued at N19.272 billion.

By volume of shares, activities at the trading floor was led by the Financial Services Industry which recorded 1.096 billion shares in 11,106 deals, and valued at N12.294 billion.

On the tech scene, from equity raiser, which is now becoming a weekly affairs, to opportunity windows for African entrepreneurs; the week was characterised by a long list of events.

Nigerian Fintech startup, Paychant, launched a new service platform, Quick, to enable users in Nigeria to buy air-time, data, cable TV, and electricity with Bitcoin.

Also, Bankly, Nigerian fintech startup, secured US$2 million in seed funding to accelerate its consumer acquisition as it leads its growth process. Read full review

 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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