The entire portfolio of the African Development Bank (AfDB), made up of 61 operations, climbed from $4.5 billion to $5 billion between March and December last year. The multilateral lender made this known on Friday at the approval of Nigeria’s Country Strategy Paper 2020-2024 by its board of directors.

“Of the total active operations, 29 were in the public sector, with a commitment of $2bn (43 per cent) and 32 non-sovereign operations with a total commitment of $3bn, equivalent to 57 per cent of the total portfolio,” the bank said. Read more here

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has declared that 42 per cent of the respondents it surveyed in its newly released COVID-19 Impact Monitoring report were not currently working due to the coronavirus outbreak.

NBS noted that the survey was carried out from 20th April to 11th May at a time a federally mandated lockdown was in force in the country.

The consequences of the pandemic were most telling on the service, commerce and agriculture sectors, the report stated, while 79 per cent of respondents claimed that their total household income has decreased since the middle of March. Read more here

The Nigerian government has declared that a new initiative named Green Imperative valued at $1.2 billion, under the Nigeria-Brazil Bilateral Agriculture Development Programme, will revolutionise the agriculture sector in the country. Lai Mohammed, the Information and Culture Minister, gave the revelation at a joint media conference he anchored alongside Sabo Nanono, the Minister of Agriculture, in Abuja Thursday.

The programme, a product of Nigeria’s resolution in June 2016 to partake in Brazil’s Government-to-Government More Food International Programme, will be executed between five to ten years and bankrolled by the Development Bank of Brazil and Deutsche Bank, according to Mr. Mohammed. Read more here

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: CBN forecasts contraction; Nigeria’s Monetary Policy Rate falls; See other stories that made our pick

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) on Thursday removed the cap on the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) and gave oil marketers the licence to fix the price of the commodity.

In a document titled, “Market Based Pricing Regime for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) Regulations, 2020,” and signed by its Executive Secretary, Abdulkadir Saidu, the agency said the price of PMS would be determined by market forces henceforth. Read more here

On NSE ROUNDUP: Market sheds N118bn on strong negative sentiments

The market was largely bearish this week as several investors were intent on cashing out their investments, consequently putting up large volumes of stocks for sale.

A depreciation of well over N154 billion was posted on Friday alone and the loss for the week would have been heftier if not for the gains recorded in the first few days that helped temper the loss.

All the key market performance indicators closed lower. A negative market breadth was recorded this week as 39 losers emerged against 26 gainers. The All Share Index (ASI) and the Market Capitalisation fell by 1% and 0.90% respectively. While the former closed at 25,016.30 basis points, the latter closed at N13.050 trillion. Read more here

https://www.ripplesnigeria.com/business-roundup-oil-marketers-to-fix-pump-price-nigeria-records-42-job-loss-see-other-stories-that-made-our-pick/

Coronavirus: About 4 in 10 Nigerians lost their jobs in April — NBS

Not less than four in every ten Nigerians (42 per cent) who were working before the outbreak of coronavirus in the country lost their jobs due to the impact of COVID-19, in April, an NBS survey found.

This estimate includes respondents in the poorest households, where about 5 in 10 (45 per cent) stopped working due to COVID-19, and the wealthiest households, where about 4 in 10 (39 per cent) lost their jobs.

The former bracket is where Folarin Adewole belongs. He said he was one of the outsourced staff laid off by Access Bank last month.

Although he received full payment for May, he said he “feels bad and very unusual” that that might be his last.

The National Longitudinal Phone Survey (NLPS) on the socioeconomic effects of COVID-19 on Nigerian households was conducted between April 20 and May 11, a time range that coincided with a federally mandated lockdown, initiated on March 30.

It is the first of a planned 12 waves of the COVID-19 NLPS of households in Nigeria, where 3,000 households from the 2018/19 General Household Survey — Panel were contacted and 1,950 households were fully interviewed.

The survey also found that the commerce, service and agriculture sectors were the most hit by COVID-19.

Specifically, households earning from non-farm businesses lost their jobs the most, with 9 in 10 (85% per cent) families saying a member of their household lost their job. Likewise, in households engaged in farming, livestock or fishing, about 7 in 10 (73 per cent) said a member of their household lost their job. Among wage earners, about 6 in 10 (58 per cent) families said a member of their household lost their job.

More so, the National Bureau of Statistics said about 8 in every 10 persons interviewed (79 per cent) said that their households’ total income decreased since mid-March.

Within seven days prior to the survey (April 13 to 19), the report found that the range of 35-59 per cent of households who needed to buy staple foods like yam, rice and beans said they were not able to buy them.

Affordability aside, increase in the prices of major food items reduced the purchasing power of 85 per cent (about 9 in 10) of households since the coronavirus outbreak. This pales when compared to only 19 per cent (2 in 10) between January 2017 and January 2019.

As a result, in the bid to absorb the widespread shocks, half (51 per cent) of all households resorted to reduction in their food consumption.

Daniel Denis, 32, is a porter at Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LUTH) whose salary was recently slashed by half, to N15,000. The father of a 9-year-old daughter told PREMIUM TIMES he “barely feeds once a day” due to this.

READ ALSO: How Nigeria’s first 32 coronavirus patients were treated — Report
“Experience of economic shocks in the few months after the outbreak of coronavirus far exceeds shocks experienced between 2017 and 2019,” the survey which is part of a World Bank global effort to support countries’ data collection efforts to monitor the impact of COVID-19, said.

The economic strain on many households due to COVID-19 is further worsened by a dip in their access to medical treatment. Approximately a quarter of all households were not able to access medical treatment when they needed it during the lockdown, the report said.

On the educational front, among households with children attending school prior to the nationwide closure in March, 62 per cent said that their children had engaged in any learning and educational activities since the closure.

Respondents are generally aware of important preventive measures against coronavirus such as handwashing (97 per cent), avoiding gatherings (90 per cent) and social distancing (89 per cent).

In Mr Adewole’s case, he said although regular staff were not laid off by his employers, but, he, an “outsourced staff”, was. I had hoped CBN’s order that banks must not lay off their workers would be a saving grace, but that wasn’t the case.

With that out of the picture, he “expected the bank to just pay us off, (so that) one can start a new life, considering the timing of the lay off.”

But that, too, was not to be.

ours is a failed state