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BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Naira falls heavily against dollar; South African Airways rejects Naira for payment; and other stories

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Companies in Nigerian pay N864.7bn tax to govt in H1, 21

Hello, and welcome to the 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:

· Nigeria attracts $1.47bn foreign inflows in six months

· Elon Musk eyes Nigerian market for electric vehicle raw materials, govt gives counter offer

· Naira falls heavily against dollar at official market

· South African Airways rejects Naira for payment of tickets

Summary:

Tesla, the company owned by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, showed interest in signing a trade partnership with Nigeria, to import raw materials for production of batteries for its electric vehicles.

Musk’s company had planned to import lithium, an essential component for building batteries of electric vehicles, from Nigeria, where a large deposits of the minerals are found in Kogi, Plateau, Nasarawa, Oyo, Ekiti, Cross River, and Kwara states.

An unnamed representative of Tesla had discussed with Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite, on trade pact that would see Musk’s company list Nigeria as one of its market source for lithium.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed that Nigeria in six months of 2022 attracted $1.47 billion capital inflows.

According to CBN the Nigerian banking industry attracted $1.47 billion as capital inflows in the first half of 2022, an increase of 109.8% compared to $698.2 million received in the second half of last year.

The amount attracted in the first six months of 2022 was also 46.5% higher than the $1 billion inflows recorded in the corresponding period of 2021.

The Nigerian currency, Naira, depreciated heavily against the United States dollars at the official market on Thursday.

Read also:BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Over 5m Nigerians dump bank accounts; Currency traders lose big as dollar crashes. Other stories

After trading activities on Thursday, Data from FMDQ Securities showed that Naira exchanged for the US dollar at N430.25.

This was a N1.5 or 0.34 percent loss when compared to the N428.75 for the last two days.

South African Airways will henceforth reject Naira for payment of its flight tickets.

The airline disclosed this in a statement issued on Wednesday and addressed to its trade partners. It added that the decision would take effect immediately.

The development may not be unconnected with the $450 million belonging to some foreign carriers and trapped in the country.

On NSE ROUNDUP: Investors drop N189bn as Nigeria’s capital market continues losing streak

Investors in the Nigerian capital market lost N189.06 billion at the close of trading on Friday.

This followed the dip in equity capitalization by -0.7 percent from N26.97 trillion to N26.78 trillion on the trading floor on Friday.

Similarly, the All-Share Index crashed by 350.53 basis points to close at 49,664.07, down from 50,014.6 posted the previous day.

Investors traded 750.28 million shares worth N5.30 billion in 4,076 deals today.

On the tech scene, BONBELL, Grant Master, Sharwa, IHC, TeamApt, ZeePay, Bluechip Technologies, Google were some of the names that made the headlines in the tech ecosystem this week.

Nigerians, during the week, took to social media to lament the difficulties of having to pay for some Google services in United States dollars.

Also, a Ghanaian fintech startup, Zeepay, has closed $10m in additional debt funding from South Africa’s Verdant Capital.

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