Brazil and Congo will reinforce their cooperation in regards to land. This is what came out from a meeting held last Feb 14 between Brazil’s ambassador to Congo, Raul de Taunay, and Congo’s land affairs minister, Parfait Aimé Coussoud-Mavoungou. Through this partnership, Congo will learn a lot from the Southern American country as many of there are many Brazilian companies are operating in...

India has shown interest in importing $100 million worth of pigeon pea from Nigeria, according to the National Coordinating Director of the Nigerian Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS), Vincent Isegbe. Isegbe who disclosed this in Abuja said the Federal Government got the offer from the Asian country after conducting its Pest Crop Survey (PCS) for some agricultural commodities in...

Data from the Central Bank of Nigeria on Friday revealed that foreign exchange reserves as of February 15th, 2017 reached $29 billion, the highest level in 19 months. Nigeria's reserves have increased by 11.2% from the beginning of this year but still remains below the peak of $64 billion reached in August 2008. This rise, according to Reuters, is as a result of the recent increase in...

Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh (photo), said the government can no longer afford the high importation bill on fish. According to the official, a rising population, scarcity of foreign exchange income and the naira’s depreciation spurred this decision. Ogbeh said Nigeria spends $700 million on fish imports each year to overcome the deficit between demand (3.32mln Mt/y) and...

The Nigerian Debt Management Office (DMO) has revealed that the country’s total debt at the end of 2016 was $57.39 billion. Speaking while defending the agency’s 2017 budget before the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, the Director-General of DMO, Abraham Nwankwo (photo), said foreign debts stood at $11.41 billion, while domestic debt amounted to $45.98 billion....

A Nigerian Federal High Court has issued an order for the permanent forfeiture of a N34 billion ($109million) associated to former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Allison-Madueke (photo). The judge of the High Court, Justice Muslim Hassan, gave the order on Thursday while passing judgement on a suit filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), demanding for the...

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has allocated $2.83bn over the last two months to the manufacturing and other sectors to import raw materials and spare parts to boost production capacity. This was revealed by the Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, CBN, Isaac Okorafor. He explained that out of the amount disbursed, $609m and $228m were released in December...

The World Bank has disclosed that Nigeria would need about $140 billion by 2030 in order to take effective action on climate change. Benoit Bosquet, the Practice Manager Africa, Environment & Natural Resources at the World Bank disclosed this during his presentation at the ongoing workshop on Climate Change Knowledge Immersion in Kaduna State. He said that in order for the country to...

Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the award of 12 road construction contracts worth N126 billion ($404million). “The headline figures are in the region of about 126 billion naira. But I think that is not the story, the story really is what the contracts do to the economy. They restore confidence back to the construction industry. Contractors who have been owed for two...

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that Nigeria’s annual inflation increased to 18.72% in January 2017 from the 18.55% recorded in December 2016. According to the statistics office, the rise was mainly spurred by an increase in prices of food, transport and electricity. In regards to food prices, “the Food Index increased to 17.82% (year-on-year) in January 2017, up by 0.43...