BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Oil market price and the COVID-19 effect; FIRS moves to contain revenue leakages; 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, mainstream business activities while not forgetting the tech/economy build up.

Here are the Headlines:

• South Africa appoints Nigeria’s Okonjo-Iweala to lift country out of recession
• Harder times ahead for Nigeria as OPEC moots 1m bpd oil output cut
• Auditor General, ICPC move to investigate income leakages in FIRS, others
• Govt plans budget review as Covid 19 takes toll on oil prices

Summary:

Recession-plagued South Africa is looking the way of Nigeria’s former Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to chair an economic think tank that will deliver it from its current austerity to economic stability.

President Cyril Ramaphosa reportedly named Mrs Okonjo-Iweala head of the country’s Economic Advisory Council in Pretoria and afterwards took group photographs with other members of the council.

The rainbow nation is frantically seeking panacea to its myriad economic challenges which recently saw the nation slip to its second recession in successive years with its economy contracting by 1.4% in Q4 2019. Read more.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has on Thursday, March 5, agreed to another cut in production adding up to 1 million barrels per day (bpd) among its fourteen members while anticipating Russia and its allies under the OPEC+ cartel to tow a similar path by bringing production down by half a million bpd.

The Saudi-led group is proposing the new measure to last through the second quarter of 2020 as a timely buffer to the crushing weight of the Covid 19 epidemic on global oil prices. Read more.

Plans are afoot by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to conduct an inquiry into the operations of the nation’s revenue generating agencies.

The task is intended to unravel areas of income leakages in a bid to block them and increase the income generated into government’s treasury.

Anthony Ayine, the Auditor General of the Federation and Bolaji Owasanoye, the ICPC Chairman signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Abuja Wednesday, preparatory to the start of the audit. Read more.

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: CBN to seize private jets of debtors; debt servicing gulps over 60% of 2019 revenue; See other stories that made our pick

Zainab Ahmed, the Minister of Finance and Budget Planning, on Wednesday, March 3, 2019 said the Federal Government intended to review Nigeria’s 2020 budget in the light of shrinking oil receipts triggered by global effects of the Coronavirus epidemic.

She went further to say the mid-term review was intended to decide the way forward. Read more.

On NSE ROUNDUP: Bargain-hunting in blue-chip stocks lifts market performance

Bargain-hunting in high-cap stocks largely shaped the direction of the market this week as the Nigerian bourse closed in the positive this week, thanks to  two intervening days of bull run.

The bull performances of Wednesday and Thursday were partly driven by a couple of impressive Full Year corporate results with a number of high-cap companies declaring dividends in the course of the week though these positives were not enough to stall the bear’s end-of-week comeback on Friday.

All the key market performance indicators closed higher this week. A positive market breadth was recorded this week as 36 gainers emerged against 25 gainers. The All Share Index (ASI) inched up by 0.24% to 26,279.61 basis points. Equally, Market Capitalisation increased by 0.27% to N13.694 trillion. To read more, follow link.

Thanks for joining the roundup this week. See you next week for another 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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