Aso Villa Reads for 8/7/2019
Every day, we bring you the best stories that the Media is reporting about the Government of Nigeria
Daily Trust reports that the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO aviance) Plc plans to grow its profit by 323.3 per cent to N2.13 billion in 2019 as the management of the company assured that ongoing strategic initiatives would deliver significant growths over the next five years. The management of the company presented the underlying facts behind the operations of the company to capital market stakeholders at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). The Group Managing Director, Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO aviance) Plc, Mrs Olatokunbo Fagbemi, said new investment in ground support equipment, strategic investments in infrastructure and human capital development and improving operational efficiency at the airports would drive considerable growths this year and the years ahead. She outlined that the company would achieve a turnover of N13.27 billion in 2019 as against N9.88 billion in 2018 while profit before tax is expected to rise from N503 million in 2018 to N2.13 billion in 2019. Profit after tax is projected to rise to N1.81 billion. Over the next five years, the company expects its revenue to rise steadily from N9.8 billion in 2018 to N13.269 in 2019. From 2020 to 2023, the company’s revenue projections stood at N16.916 billion, N21.567 billion, N27.495 billion and N35.054 billion, respectively. She assured the investing public that the company is confident of paying nothing less than 25 kobo dividend per share noting that the company expects to see significant impact of its transformation agenda on its performance as from the third quarter given the seasonal nature of the aviation business. “We can assure you that we will achieve our targets in 2019. We believe we can achieve our forecasts. We had thought deeply about the figures and put everything in place to ensure we achieve the forecasts. We stand by the forecasts that we have and we believe we will achieve them,” Fagbemi said.
Tech start-ups in Nigeria have raised $110.9m investment from local and foreign investors in the first half of the year, investigations have revealed. From the information gathered from equity and non-equity deals in the tech industry, over 30 Nigerian start-ups with pan-African operations attracted funds in more than 50 rounds denominated in naira and dollar to scale their businesses. However, Punch reports that the value of the funds raised by more than 10 start-ups was not disclosed. Nigeria tech space, over the years, has become the most preferred investment destination for investors with the country’s start-ups raising $178m in funding rounds in 2018, according to a report by Techpoint Africa. The funding rounds, which ranged from pre-seed, seed stage, Series A to C funding, debt financing, grants to angel investment, were used by most of the start-ups to expand their operations to other markets and, in some cases, develop new products. In January this year, Crop2Cash, an agric-tech company raised $100,000 pre-seed round while Provider, an AI-powered food delivery firm, received $1,000 pre-seed funds from an angel investor, Rowland Eno. Records showed that only one company attracted investment in February. A Nigerian fintech start-up, TeamApt, received $5.5m Series A fund from a number of investors led by a Nigerian venture capital company, Quantum Capital Partners. In March 2019, CredPal raised a seed round of $150,000 from Y Combinator; Kudi, a digital payment start-up, got $5m Series A investment from a French venture capital, Partech; Carbon (former Paylater) got $5m debt facility from OneFi; and Middletrust, an escrow service provider, also received $5,000 pre-seed investment from an undisclosed source.
According to Blue Print, the Executive Director of Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) Mr Segun Awolowo said at the weekend that there are 22 products from non-oil sector from which Nigeria can earn $30,000 billion and create 500,000 export-oriented jobs annually through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement signed by President Muhammadu Buhari in Niamey, Niger Republic. Fielding questions from State House correspondents after a meeting with the president, Awolowo said some of the products the country can earn foreign exchange are cocoa, cotton, cement, leather, cashew, sesame, shea butter, palm oil, fertilizer, petrochemicals and rubber, among others. “I briefed him on the setting up of national committee on export promotion by National Economic Council (NEC) chaired by the governor of Jigawa State and what we are working in order to diversify the economy. “What we hope to achieve is to raise more revenue for Nigeria from other sources. You know 90 percent of our revenue is from oil and we cannot survive. Even though oil prices are rising a bit because of Iran, there is problem there. But we should not rest on our oars because, those days of $140 per barrel is gone forever. So we have to look inwards and produce more. “The zero oil plan is about raising production and productivity, we identified 22 sectors where we can earn foreign exchange apart from oil. We are hoping that in the next 10–15 years we will be able to raise $150 billion from sources outside oil. “That is what we are working on and we are galvanizing the whole states behind us in other to raise production and productivity. We are working with the relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to achieve this. You know the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN just announced an initiative on five of our products and giving them low interest rates to farm and raise production,” he said.
Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Mr. Segun Awolowo, has disclosed that Nigeria, within the next 10 to 15 years, could earn about $150 billion from non-oil revenue sources. Awolowo, who spoke to State House Correspondents after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the weekend, said the successful implementation of a zero oil plan will increase significantly foreign exchange earnings for the country. According to him, he was at the Villa to brief the President on the zero oil implementation plan and the steps taken so far. The NEPC boss, who explained that although global oil prices were on the rise because of Iran, said there was still problem for countries like Nigeria who depend completely on the sector for revenues. “What we hope to achieve is to raise more revenue for Nigeria from other sources. You know 90 per cent of our revenue is from oil and we cannot survive. But we should not rest on our oars because, those days of $140 per barrel is gone forever. So we have to look inwards and produce more. “The zero oil plan is about raising production and productivity. We identified 22 sectors where we can earn foreign exchange apart from oil. We are hoping that in the next 10–15 years we will be able to raise $150 billion from sources outside oil,” Awolowo noted. He identified cocoa, sheer nut and cashew as some non-oil revenue-making commodities in the country. New Telegraph reports.
A total volume of 557,083,712 transactions valued at N34.02tn were recorded in Q1 2019 as data on Electronic Payment Channels in the Nigeria’s banking sector. The National Bureau of Statistics disclosed this in a report on Selected banking sector data: Sectorial breakdown of credit, ePayment channels and staff strength. NIBSS Instant Payments transactions dominated the volume of transactions recorded. 232,816,102 volume of NIP transactions valued at N24.17tn were recorded in Q1 2019. In terms of credit to private sector, the total value of credit allocated by the banks stood at N15.21tn as of Q1 2019. Oil and gas and manufacturing sectors got credit allocation of N3.49tn and N2.23tn to record the highest credit allocation as of the period under review.According to TodayNG, as of Q1, 2019, the total number of banks’ employees increased by 0.33 per cent quarter-on-quarter from 104,669 in Q4 2018 to 105,017. In the fourth quarter of 2018, a total volume of 616,528,697 transactions valued at N39.15tn were recorded as data on electronic payment channels. NIP transactions dominated the volume of transactions recorded. 228,209,423 volume of NIP transactions valued at N23.57tn were recorded in Q4 2018.
