Daily Watch – Outstanding loans rise against sluggish deposit growth, PIB passes second reading

3rd November 2016

  • The African Development Bank’s Board of Directors on Wednesday approved a $600 million loan for Nigeria, just over a month after the FG had approached the lender for a budget-support facility. The loan is meant to help Nigeria plug its budget deficit. The $600 million is the first tranche of a total $1 billion budget support package. The second disbursement of $400 million will depend on the implementation of reforms, and is expected early next year, according to Ousmane Dore, the bank’s Nigeria country director. The President, AfDB, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, had on September 26 said the bank was working on giving Nigeria loan facilities of $4.1 billion between now and next year for critical sectors of the economy. The loans include $1 billion at a concessionary interest rate of 1.2 percent for Nigeria to address the 2016 budget deficit and aid her economic recovery.
  • The chairman of the FIRS, Tunde Fowler has revealed that the organisation received more than 700,000 applications for a vacancy it recently advertised. Speaking before the House of Representatives’ committee on public petitions, Fowler said that out of the 700,000 applicants more than 2,000 had first class degrees in various disciplines and were qualified to be engaged by the service. He said FIRS would recruit only 500 people. Fowler’s appearance at the House followed a petition by some of the applicants, who claimed to have been excluded from the employment processes. The FIRS had invited applications for various positions in series of adverts placed in some national dailies.
  • Bad banking industry loans as at end of third of Q3 2016 escalated by ₦2.1 trillion to ₦13.8 trillion, an increase of 17.9 percent against ₦11.7 trillion for the corresponding period of 2015. The new figure is made up of loans that have matured but remain either unpaid, rolled-over or restructured, as well as new ones created in the period under review. The NBS indicated that the 17.9 percent escalation of loan portfolios was coming against a 4.02 percent growth in deposit base of the banks to ₦18.1 trillion in Q3 2016 from ₦17.4 trillion in the same period in 2015. The figures represent a growing funds mismatch in line with the CBN report for H1 2016, which pointed to inadequacies in funding of banks’ assets. A ₦4.9 trillion funding gap was recorded as at the end of H1 2016.
  • The PIB has passed a second reading at the Senate, with the plan to unbundle the NNPC in focus. Under the unbundling plan, the NNPC will be broken into two commercial entities limited by shares and to be known as the National Petroleum Company and the National Assets Management Company. The Bill proposes that both companies will be incorporated within six months of its passage into law, while the Minister of Petroleum Resources will be required within 12 months of the incorporation of the companies to transfer the assets and liabilities of the NNPC to the two companies.
  • A High Court in Abuja has fined telco, Airtel, ₦5 million for the violation of a customer’s right to privacy. Justice Jude Okeke delivered judgment in a suit filed by Emmanuel Anene on December 21 against Airtel for continued disturbance through unsolicited messages to his telephone line. The judge said that the issue for determination was whether the plaintiff’s evidence made out a case to justify the claims in the reliefs he sought. He said that the court records showed that the plaintiff’s evidence of claims was served on Airtel, who failed to respond.