BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Petrol price jumps by 8.73%; CBN fines 10 banks N7.02trn for weak deposit; 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:

• Petrol price jumps by 8.73%, most expensive in Ebonyi, Enugu
• Nigerian pension fund assets hit N13.8trn
• CBN fines 10 banks N7.02trn for weak deposit
• Banks loans to oil and gas companies jump to N5.68tn

Summary:

The cost of a litre of Premium Motor Spirit (Petrol) increased by 8.73 per cent in March 2022 with Nigerians residing in the South-East region paying the highest price.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) disclosed this on Wednesday in its monthly price watch report.

The report showed that the average retail price paid by consumers for petrol increased to N185.30 in March compared to N170.42 in February 2022.

Oil and gas companies have been obliged to seek loans from Nigerian banks as vandalism cuts into their revenues.

According to data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) the total loans to the oil and gas sector jumped from N5.19 trillion in January 2021 to N5.68 trillion as at the end of December 2021.

This indicates that N490 billion was borrowed by oil and gas companies in 12 months.

For failing to meet the expected deposit in their current accounts, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has removed from banks accounts a whopping N7.02 trillion.

CBN provides a specific Cash Reserve Requirement (CRR) for each commercial bank in the nation. Each bank will be asked to retain a specific amount of its deposits in the current account of the central bank.

The CRR for banks is put at 27.5 per cent which many financial analysts consider very high since the money cannot be accessed for loans and other financial dealings.

Nigeria’s total pension asset value rose by 12 per cent year-on-year to N13.8 trillion as of February 2022.

The pension fund as at last month stood at N13.6trn. This was contained in the pension funds industry report for the review month as released by the National Pension Commission (PenCom).

PenCom reports that total pension accounts increased by over 324,000 to 9.6 million relative to the comparable period of 2021.

On NSE ROUNDUP: See top five gainers and related activities in the Nigerian capital market

The Easter Public holiday stretched into Monday, cutting the number of trading days down to four, and this weighed on the outcome of this week’s capital market performance.

According to market report on NGX, investors parted with N17.813 billion to trade 1.302 billion shares in 20,212 deals, in contrast to the previous week’s 1.247 billion shares traded in 23,406 deals, worth N22.372 billion.

Investors activities in the capital market was felt more in the Financial Sector, which saw an exchange of 836.781 million shares, valued at N6.007 billion, in 9,527 deals.

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Nigeria’s oil production drops to new low; Inflation rises to six months high; Other stories…

The Oil & Gas Industry also recorded a substantial share trade among investors, who traded over 86.909 million shares, worth N1.243 billion, in 1,770 deals.

The Consumer Goods Industry was next, with 86.286 million shares exchange hands in the Nigerian bourse, in 3,056 deals, which were valued at N2.225 billion.

On the tech scene, Syarpa, Etap, Algebra Ventures, Union54,AfDB, BFA Global, SadaPay, and Soter Analytics were some of the names that made the headlines this week.

A Nigeria-based fintech startup, Syarpa, during the week, announced securing a pre-seed funding worth $500K.

Also, a Nigerian-based startup, Etap, secured a $1.5M pre-seed funding as it seeks to drive expansion across West African countries.

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