UBA, Moroccan Bank Sign MoU on Trade Finance

Pan-African banking groups, Attijariwafa Bank and United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, in the present of President Muhammadu Buhari and His Majesty King Mohammed VI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen their collaborative efforts in correspondent banking, investment funding, trade finance and project finance on the African continent.The framework document, which outlined key areas of cooperation between Attijariwafa and UBA, was signed during the official visit of His Majesty King Mohammed VI to President Buhari at the Presidential Villa Abuja recently, by Mr. Tony Elumelu, Group Chairman UBA and Mr. Mohamed El Kettani, Chairman and CEO of Attijariwafa Bank Group.In accordance with the MOU, both banks will organise business to business missions to identify and develop business and investment opportunities, not only between Nigeria and Morocco, but across their respective African networks. Elumelu, while commenting on the MoU said: “This collaborative effort is a historic milestone. As two groups with considerable footprints in Africa, we see huge potential in bringing our collective expertise in banking to provide Africa-led solutions to the needs of Africans.” Chairman and CEO of Attijariwafa said: “Nigeria is the largest African economy and a leading commercial and financial hub in West Africa. It goes without saying that our group should collaborate with outstanding players, such as UBA Plc, to provide customized assistance to African and international companies to grow trade and investment flows, between not only Morocco and Nigeria, but also in all countries where our two groups are established.” The MOU we just signed is a first but major milestone in a long-term partnership. It also heralds promising perspectives for African and international investors worldwide.” Source: Thisday

BoI Lists 200 Beneficiaries for FG’s N140bn Micro Credit

The Bank of Industry (BoI) has enlisted 200 beneficiaries in Kano for the N140 billion Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEED) initiated by the federal government.GEED is one of the five pillars of the federal government’s social investment intervention scheme aimed at empowering vulnerable groups in the country. Other programmes under the social investment intervention scheme include, the Home Grown School Feeding Programme, the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme, the Job Creation Programme N-Power, and the StudentBusaryProgramme.Speaking during a town hall meeting with the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo in Kano, the Minister of Women Affairs, Senator Aisha Alhassan, said GEEP, which is being implemented by the development finance institution was designed to provide micro credit to artisans, farmers, marketwomenandentrepreneursengaginginproductiveenterprise.The meeting afforded the vice president the opportunity to interact with traders, market men and women, artisans, food vendors and small business owners on the social intervention programmes of government. According to the minister, each beneficiary who must belong to a registered association or cooperative, is entitled to a loan between N10,000 and N100,000 repayable within six months.She said the bank would disburse the loans directly to beneficiaries’ personalaccountswithverifiableBVN.According to her, “Loans will be disbursed and repayment collected through local banks and money agents in order to reach remote areas where there are no banking facilities. Group leaders will be required to help mobilise their members for verification and repayment of the loans promptly.“The loans are interest free and no collateral is required. There is only an administrative charge of 5% which covers the bank’s expenses for administering the fund. Payback period is 6 months and there is a one-month grace period after getting the loan before repayment starts.“A weekly recovery plan has been prepared to ease repayment for beneficiaries. For example, a loan of N10,000 will be repaid through a weekly repayment of approximately N440 while a N50,000 loan requires about N2,200 weekly repayment.” Source: Thisday

Poor power supply hinders N3tn investment in data centres

The prolonged struggle to overcome the power crisis is a major obstacle to broadband penetration in the country, OZIOMA UBABUKOH writes The Federal Government must resolve the power infrastructure shortcomings in the country and formulate good broadband policies to attract N3tn investment in data centre deployment, analysts have said. Data centres are critical to the provision of faster and cheaper Internet connectivity and President Muhammadu Buhari as well as the Ministry of Communications have said approximately 300 of such centres are required to support affordable Internet services and software applications in the country. The President and the ministry believe the development of data centres will also help to stop data hosting overseas, which aids capital flight. However, findings from our correspondent showed that a world class data warehouse would cost between $20m and $30m. This means that Nigeria currently requires an investment of approximately N3tn for its planned 300 data centres.Foreign Information Technology companies such as Google Incorporated, Microsoft Corporation and Oracle, at various fora, have said they will be willing to invest in this area. The companies, however, expressed concern that five years after the landing of fibre optic submarine cables on Nigeria’s shores, the country had been unable to speed up the pace of wholesale fibre access due to the absence of a broadband policy that would promote infrastructure sharing and competition. “Technology firms, such as Google, are interested in investing hugely in data centres if Nigeria can address the power challenge and speedily tackle the issue of last mile connectivity and distribution capacity, so as to spread available bandwidth capacity across the entire country,” says the Communications Manager, Anglophone West Africa, Google, Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade. The Director, Business and Strategy, Kits Technologies, a data centre infrastructure provider, Taofeek Okoya, says stable power supply is critical. He explains, “Yes, broadband infrastructure is important, but power is even more critical. Today, Nigeria is still struggling with unstable power supply. Importantly, data centres consume a lot of electricity. “Nigeria is, indeed, a huge market and the potential here is enormous for local and foreign IT companies. As I speak, there are lots of data centre initiatives ongoing in the country. A lot of banks and government agencies are building data centres.” Source: Punch

FG bans importation of vehicles through land borders

From next month, importation of vehicles through the land borders will be prohibited, according to a new prohibition order issued by the Federal Government to that effect. The prohibition order covers all new and used vehicles. A statement issued on Monday by the Nigeria Customs Service indicated that the ban was sequel to a presidential directive restricting all vehicle imports to the seaports with effect from January 1, 2017.The restriction on importation of vehicles follows that of rice, whose imports through the land borders had been banned since April 2016. In the statement signed by its spokesperson, Mr. Wale Adeniyi, the NCS advised importers of vehicles through the land borders to utilise the grace period up till December 31 to clear their vehicles landed in neighbouring countries’ ports. The Federal Government had disclosed at a forum of the automotive industry on Friday that it would ban the importation of vehicles through land borders and enforce the presentation of roadworthiness certificates on such vehicles from their countries of origin before allowing them into Nigeria. The Director-General, National Automotive Design and Development Council, Mr. Aminu Jalal, who said this on behalf of the government, added that it was a means of controlling the influx of used vehicles, popularly called ‘Tokunbo’, into the country. Stakeholders in the automotive industry had earlier called for strict regulation of the importation of vehicles, noting that poor implementation of the auto policy introduced in the last quarter of 2013 by former President Goodluck Jonathan administration was driving down the volume of their products. The auto policy prescribed the imposition of 70 per cent tariff on imported cars, both old and new ones. While importers of new cars are currently paying 70 per cent of the cost of the vehicles as import duty, owners/importers of Tokunbo cars pay 35 per cent. The government has yet to enforce the implementation of the 35 per cent import duty on used cars, which ought to have commenced last year. Source: Punch

FG stops 571,000 tonnes of rice from entering Nigeria

The Federal Government on Monday announced that 571,000 tonnes of foreign rice warehoused in neighbouring countries were being targeted for the Nigerian market for the Christmas and New Year season, but vowed to stop their entry. It also stated that Nigeria recently took delivery of 110 rice mills in its bid to enhance local production so as to commence the exportation of white rice from next year. The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, who disclosed these in Abuja, stated that some of Nigeria’s neighbours, particularly the Republic of Benin, were not moving goods within the region as required by relevant treaties. He, however, stated that the Federal Government would henceforth check all illegal movements of food and non-food items into Nigeria from the neighbouring countries.Ogbeh said, “What they do is that they import goods, station themselves at our borders and then smuggle them into Nigeria. For instance, the Republic of Benin doesn’t eat parboiled rice. They eat white rice. But all the rice that comes from the borders into Nigeria is parboiled.“I have a list now of all the ships that left Thailand in the last seven weeks and they’ve arrived; 571,000 tonnes of rice waiting to enter Nigeria for Christmas. But we won’t allow that. We have to review the treaty in the region, because we are at the losing end. Why are we doing this? It is because this rice is not definitely grown in the Republic of Benin.” He added, “They bring tomato paste and chicken not produced in the Republic of Benin and because the Nigerian market is so huge, that they want to exploit it. But no economy out of sympathy should damage our own. Source: Punch

CBN to Auction Dollars for Fuel Import

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed banks to submit bids for a “special currency auction” targeting fuel importers to meet demand for matured letters of credit. Traders said the central bank sent a message to banks on Monday to submit backlog dollar demand from fuel importers for a special intervention. Nigeria consumes 45 million litres of gasoline a day, or roughly 280,000 barrels, which would require the market to provide some $18 million a day. Importers cover about 30 per cent of this, with the state oil firm covering the rest, which is a big strain on the market for dollars.The West African nation has four refineries but decades of neglect mean it needs to import petroleum products. Fuel shortages often occur in Nigeria during festive periods such as Christmas and Muslim holidays.Reuters quoted traders to have said the government wanted to ensure that fuel retailers had enough products, so it was channelling dollars to them and also to avoid shortages which in May crippled banking, airline and telecom services. Nigeria is in its deepest recession in 25 years, worsened by falling crude output as militants attack pipelines in the Niger Delta, the heart of its production, and global prices remain low, choking off dollars needed to fund imports. The dollar shortage has caused many companies to halt operations and lay off workers, compounding an economic crisis. It was not clear at what rate the central bank would sell the dollars. In May, the government agreed a deal with oil firms in Nigeria to sell their dollars directly to fuel importers, to end months of scarcity partly caused by a currency shortage after it hiked fuel prices by 67 per cent, using an exchange rate of N285 per dollar.The naira has been stuck at around N305 per dollar on the official market for more than two months since the central bank in June abandoned its dollar peg of N197 against the currency. It was quoted at N485 on the black market yesterday. Source: Thisday

Android users warned as 1.3 million phones are infected with account-stealing virus

A mass hacker attack against Android phones has given hackers access to 1.3 million Google accounts – with email, photos and documents.

New victims were being infected at a rate of 13,000 a day, cybersecurity company Check Point warned.

The attack – known as Ghooligan – is spread via illegitimate apps downloaded from outside official stores such as Google Play.

Hackers stole digital ‘tokens’ which could be used to break into people’s email – although so far, infected phones have just been used to download other apps and give them good reviews on other app stores.

The ratings ‘boost’ allowed cybercriminals to sell apps – making large sums of money.

Check Point’s Michael Shulov said, ‘They were able to get to the lowest level of the Android operating system where there are no limitations on what the malware can do, and then they went after these account files. It’s probably the biggest ever security breach of Google accounts.’