The Finance Dude

Access to portable water is something every Nigerian is entitled to. The reality, though, is that millions of Nigerians have no access to portable water. The rural areas are usually the worst hit by this problem. Even in urban areas, access to portable water is dwindling with negative consequences to many aspects of Nigerian life. However, the Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu has explained how the FG proposes to reform the sector to meet with the demands of Nigerians. He did this in a public presentation of the water sector road map. The road map is entitled ‘Immediate and Long-term Strategies for Water Sector- 2016-2030’ He stated that there were about 116 water projects currently ongoing in the country. However, these projects would require about 505.6 billion Naira to complete them. Some of these projects have been lying idle for over 15 years. This was because outstanding fees to contractors a...

Bonds are issued by governments and companies to raise money to finance their operations or for capital projects. When an investor buys a bond, the bond issuer promises periodic (annually or semi-annually) interest payments on the money invested at the coupon rate stated in the bond certificate. A coupon rate is the yield paid by a fixed-income security; a fixed-income security’s coupon rate is simply just the annual coupon payments paid by the issuer relative to the bond’s face or par value. The coupon rate is the yield the bond paid on its issue date. This yield changes as the value of the bond changes, thus giving the bond’s yield to maturity. The bond issuer pays interest annually until maturity, after which the issuer returns the principal amount (or face value). The coupon rate of a bond is calculated on the bond’s face value (par value). Example of how Coupon rates is determined: If you own a 10 year – N100,000 bond with a coupon rate of 10%, you will re...

The exchange rate rebounded on Friday to close at N308 at the official interbank market. The local currency gained about 5.2% reversing the N325 it closed with on Thursday. According to reports, the gains was mostly due to a sale of forex by the Central Bank of Nigeria providing enough liquidity to meet the demand currently in the market. The naira has closed at an all time low of N364 to the dollar on Thursday following a surge in demand. The central bank has been selling dollars almost daily to boost liquidity and support the naira. Join our BBM channel for instant updates : C0030863D

The Federal Government is about to spend about N60 billion ($180 million) more spending on capital projects as part of the 2016 budget in a bid to boost the economy, Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun said on Friday. Government capital spending so far has exceeded 400 billion naira this year, Adeosun said, despite the budget being held up for months by wrangling between President Muhammadu Buhari and parliament. The Government’s 2016 capital expenditure Budget is about N1.8 trillion However, with oil prices dropping, the government has struggled to fund the budget. It is now seeking advisers to manage a $1-billion eurobond it intends to offer this year. “We are going for another capital allocation meeting where we are going to allocate another 60 billion. We are pumping money into the economy at a very rapid rate,” Adeosun told reporters. Buhari on Thursday said the country needed to balance monetary and fiscal policies in order to return to growth. Adeosun said apa...

The official exchange rate hit an all time low on Thursday after it traded for about N365.25 to the dollar in a single interbank market trade of $1 million,  according to data from Reuters. According to Reuters, the Interbank trading started two hours after the market opened and offered the naira sharply lower against the dollar. A total of $13 million had been traded at the time of Reuters reporting. A look at the official closing rate displayed at the CBN’s website also showed that the exchange rate closed at a price of N325 the highest we have seen in the website of the CBN since the flexible exchange rate policy was introduced. Naira closed at about N321.5 on the website of the FMDQOTC and N347.25 according to Bloomberg’s data. Also, the CBN website also confirms Nigeria’s foreign reserves dipped to as low as $25.78 billion, the lowest in over 10 years (July 2005 to be precise). We reached out to analysts to understand what was going on. Early ...

Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserve fell to $25,780,765,483 (25.78 billion) as of August 16, the lowest we have seen since 2005. The drop was down 2.11% from a month ago. The Nations external reserves dropped below $26 billion for the first time on the 5th of August 2016 after it closed at about $25,971,610,949. In fact, the external reserves has dropped by about $480 million dollars in August alone compared to just $100 million in the whole of July. Ironically, the current balance of $25.9 billion is worth about 80% more than what it was in Naira following the depreciation of the naira after it was floated. The CBN has in the past few days ramped up sales of dollars at the interbank in the hope that it will create liquidity in a market that is yawning gape to swallow forex after nearly almost two years of intense rationing by the CBN. The Naira weakened to its lowest ever at the interbank after it closed at about N362.5/$1 in midday trading. The Naira will eventua...

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola , on Thursday said in Lagos that gas alone could not bring the much needed increase in power supply in the country. Fashola spoke as guest speaker through Chinedu Ugbo , acting Chairman, Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), at the 2016 Annual Conference of the National Association of Energy Correspondents in Lagos. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the theme of the conference is entitled: “Low oil price: Impact and the way forward” . Fashola said, “It is not gas alone that will allow us to achieve incremental power”. “It is our most reliable source of power, yes, but it is only one solution among many other underutilised solutions. Mambila Power Station, for example, is likely to be our most defining in the road to incremental power, situated in Taraba State. It will potentially add 3,000MW to the grid and yet this is a hydro-electric project, not gas. Our ministry has recently publicis...

Some say winners are born, others say they are made. However you term it, winners have admirable qualities that separate them from the many. They are rare and unique. To be a winner you have to understand what winners do to succeed. And it all starts from their habits or admirable traits which help them navigate the hurdles and uncertainties of life. Here are 10 stellar qualities of winners: 1 . They are solid  Winners don’t rely on luck or believe in accidents. They make their own luck. They know that at the end of the day what is required of them is not in bits or parts. Winners are all in and consistent to the core. 2 . They retain their values What people will admire in a winner at the end of the day, may not be their looks or talents. It could come down to their character and what they truly represent. What’s their identity and what core values do they uphold. 3 . They are mentally strong Winners stay on top of their game by retaining mental...

The Nigerian electricity industry has been under a lot of pressure. Gas supply is low and power generation has been severely affected. More worrying is that they are owned hundreds of billions of naira in debts by its customers. N93 billion of that debt is owed by Ministries and Department of Government (MDA’s). That debt cascades down the value chain of the power sector with most of it owed to power generating companies. The power sector value chain is such that power is generated by the Gencos and sold to the Marker Operators (MO), who then wheel the power  through the grid (run by transmission Company) to the Discos and then to consumers. A reverse flow starts when the customers pay their bills to the Discos and then the Discos pay the Market Operators (MO) who then pay the Gencos and then the Gencos pay the gas suppliers. For the Gencos, the above schematic is now more on paper than in reality. They hardly get enough gas to generate electricity and even when ga...

Large scale farmers in the country can start to heave a sigh of relief as the FG, through the CBN has, concluded plans to provide single digit interest loans to them as part of the Government’s efforts at revitalizing the agricultural sector. This piece of information was announced by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo during his inaugural speech at ‘The Green Alternative: Agricultural Promotion Policy 2016-2020’ During his speech, Osinbajo identified the problems that previous governments had failed to deal with, and which eventually led to the current economic crisis the country was facing. Among the problems he identified was lack of focus and capacity to carry out well-structured policies, lack of alignment between policies, neglect of the agricultural sector and over-dependence on crude oil earnings. He stressed that this administration is working assiduously to ensure that such mistakes were not repeated. For example, he noted that in alignment with the APP, the FG had t...