Business Archives - Page 25 of 50

Scarcity hits Lagos, others as fuel sells N180/litre

Fuel queues hit major cities of Lagos, Abuja and Ogun on Monday, forcing motorists to spend hours at filling stations. In Lagos and Ogun states, The PUNCH witnessed...

$15m intravenous fluids company begins operations in Kwara

Business3 years ago

$15m intravenous fluids company begins operations in Kwara

Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, has pleaded with Nigerians in the diaspora to come home and invest as a way of paying back to the...

Business3 years ago

Nigeria’s FX reserves to fall in 2022

The World Bank has said that Nigeria’s forex exchange reserve will fall in 2022 as the Central Bank of Nigeria plans to clear about $1.7bn in...

Business3 years ago

FG’s borrowing from CBN hits N19tn

The Federal Government’s total borrowing is now standing at N19.01 trillion, moving from N17.46 trillion as of December 2021. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria...

National electricity grid crashes from 3,703MW to 9MW

Business3 years ago

National electricity grid crashes from 3,703MW to 9MW

According to figures obtained from the Nigeria Electricity System Operator, an arm of the Federal Government’s power transmission company, showed that the national electricity grid crashed...

Business3 years ago

Elon Musk to Address Twitter Employees for First Time On Thursday

Elon Musk will speak to Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) employees this week for the first time at a company-wide meeting since launching his $44 billion bid in...

Business3 years ago

FG Orders Twitter, Tik Tok, others to Appoint Country Reps

The National Information Technology Development Agency has disclosed that interactive computer service platforms and Internet intermediaries are required to fulfill certain conditions in running their services...

Business3 years ago

Law Violation: FG set to sanction oil companies over

The Federal Government has said it will sanction oil and gas companies that fail to comply with the Human Capacity Development provisions contained in the Nigerian...

Manufacturing companies have said they cannot access loans at the Central Bank of Nigeria’s five per cent lending rate under its intervention scheme for manufacturing and other critical sectors. According to them, the loans have structural framework problems and are almost never accessed in banks at five per cent. They added that banks were more open to giving manufacturers loans at their official market rates. Speaking with The PUNCH, the Chairman of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria’s Electrical/Electronic sectoral group, Mrs Ijeoma Oduonye, said efforts made by her firm towards accessing the intervention funds through one of its designated commercial banks had proved abortive. She said, “Before now, we tried to work through one of the banks, but it didn’t materialise, now we are talking with another bank. It is a sector intervention fund that was going for nine per cent before but now they brought it to five per cent. But we as a company have not accessed it because the commercial banks we wanted to process it in could not process it. “I do not understand the details from their end. I don’t know the regulation between the bank and the CBN. But the bank told my firm they won’t be able to process it. Ordinarily, commercial banks would prefer you use their funds, it is at a higher interest rate.” Also, according to the Sectoral Chairman of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria’s Gas users and the Executive Director of Haffar Industries, Michael Ola-Adebayo, the structural framework of the CBN intervention leading has complexities that limit manufacturers from accessing them through the designated commercial banks. He said, “We have not been getting the loans. Has any manufacturer been borrowing this money? The commercial banks have not provided the facility to borrow money at five per cent, or even 10 per cent. According to a The PUNCH report, the CBN agreed to leave interest rates at five per cent per annum for critical sectors and manufacturing industries until March 2023. This decision followed the resolution of the Monetary Policy Committee to increase the benchmark interest rate to 13 per cent from 11.5 per cent. When contacted, the Director of Corporate Communicatios, CBN, Mr Osita Nwanisobi, disagreed with the position of the manufacturers. Read Also CBN’s rate hike portends harder times for SMEs We’ll no longer route sensitive election materials through CBN – INEC Bank customers to produce indemnity for online transfers above N1m – CBN According to him, more than N1tn has been disbursed under the intervention scheme for the manufacturing sector and others. He said, “I don’t know who the manufacturers are, because if we have a fund, and the payout as of today is over N1tn, is it not manufacturers that collected this money? “If over N1tn has been disbursed, are they ghosts? It couldn’t have been a ghost. Under the Differentiated Cash Reserve Requirement, over N1tn has been given out. The one for manufacturers, we call it the DCCR, and it is also at five per cent.” Nwanisobi added that the manufacturing firms that might have been unable to obtain funds through the scheme were not able to pitch convincing proposals on the projects that the funds would be used for. He stated, “The banks would have to do due diligence on those projects. Somebody else has to carry that credit risk.”

Business3 years ago

MAN tackles CBN over N1tn low-interest loan

Manufacturing companies have said they cannot access loans at the Central Bank of Nigeria’s five per cent lending rate under its intervention scheme for manufacturing and...

Crude oil exports leap by 194%, hit N5.6tn in three months

Business3 years ago

Crude oil exports leap by 194%, hit N5.6tn in three months

Nigeria’s crude oil exports jumped to N5.6trn in the first quarter of 2022, reflecting nearly 200 percent increase when compared to the same period in 2021....