BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Tribunal fines MultiChoice N100,000 for price hike; Debt servicing surpasses revenue; 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:

• Tribunal fines MultiChoice N100,000 over price hike
• Debt servicing surpassed Nigeria’s generated revenue
• Nigeria to increase fuel subsidy spending for 2023 by N2.7tr
• MRS, Oando increase fuel price, as fuel scarcity hit NNPC

Summary:

The Competition and Consumer Protection (CCP) tribunal has fined MultiChoice N100,000 amid a case against the company involving subscription price hike and contempt of court.

MultiChoice was penalised by the tribunal on Thursday for failing to provide a response to a substantive suit regarding the price hike after the three-member tribunal presided over by Thomas Okosun gave tbe firm 21 days to do so.

In its defense, MultiChoice’s lawyer, Jamiu Agoro, said the tribunal needed to resolve the issue about jurisdiction before judging the substantive suit, as the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) was the appropriate authority to first hear the case.

Debt servicing surpassed Nigeria’s generated revenue in the first quarter of this year, the Ministry of Finance revealed on Thursday.

In the fiscal performance report released by the ministry, the country paid N1.94 trillion on debt servicing during the period.

This was higher than N1.63 trillion the Federal Government generated as revenue in the first three months of the year.

The Federal Government will spend N2.7 trillion more on fuel subsidy payment in 2023.

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Angola is Africa’s biggest oil producer; Nigeria’s Inflation rate rises to 18.6% for June. Other stories

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, who disclosed this during the presentation of the 2023-2035 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF-FSP) on Thursday in Abuja, said the government estimated subsidy payment would gulp N6.7 trillion.

The amount was pegged on the Business-as-Usual scenario, higher than the N3.36 trillion projected for the reform scenario.

Oil marketers have increased the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) against the warning of the Federal Government, as fuel scarcity hits retail station of Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited.

The pump price at the private-owned fuel stations had been reviewed upward during Ripples Nigeria’s visit to some of the private retailers on Monday, with Oando selling at N170, adding N5 to the government-fixed price of N165 per litre.

It was also learnt that MRS hiked its price to N175 per litre, adding N10 to the cost. The increment had been driven by scarcity of fuel, disruption in distribution, and crude oil price rising in the international market.

On NSE ROUNDUP: Investors in the Nigerian capital market continued their sell-off on Friday and pushed down the equity capitalization by -0.23 percent at close of the day’s trading.

After eight hours of trading, the equity capitalization dropped by N76.6 billion from N28.10 trillion to N28.03 trillion.

The All-Share Index was down by 142.08 basis points to close at 51,979.92 against 52,122.00 achieved on Thursday.
> Investors traded 205.05 million shares worth N3.05 billion in 3,600 deals on Friday.

This surpassed 151.94 million shares valued at N2.15 billion traded by investors in 3,447 deals the previous day.

On the tech scene, Amazon, Algebra Fund II, Mx51, HerVenture, Cassava Technologies, Bloom were some of the names that made the headlines this week.

A South Africa-founded healthtech startup, Augmental Technologies, launched an app to support parents with their child’s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the US.

inq., also announced a partnership agreement with Swedish Enea AB to boost 5G deployments in Africa.

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