The Minister of State, Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika, says the construction of the second runway for the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja will gulp N67 billion, NAN reports. Sirika made the disclosure at the Ministry’s 2018 budget defence before the Joint House of Representatives Committees on Land Transport, Maritime Safety and Administration, Ports Harbour and Water-Ways and Aviation on Thursday in Abuja.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says it has recovered N216,402,565.05 from Swiss Golden Investment, an online investment company.

A statement from the commission said the investigation shows the company “has defrauded over seven thousand Nigerians to the tune of over N3 billion”.

It said the recovery was sequel to a petition the commission received from complainants who alleged they invested in the company “advertised as an online investment that deals with buying and selling of gold bars”.

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, has once again expressed concerns about Nigeria’s debt servicing capacity, as the size of the total debt keeps rising against its revenue.

Speaking at a press conference yesterday on the sidelines of the on-going World Bank Group Spring Meetings in Washington DC, Mrs Catherine Pattillo, Assistant Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF, described the country’s debt to revenue ratio, which she put at 63 percent, as “extremely high.”

Mr Stuart Symington

The United States has urged Nigerians to invest in the resources that abound in Nigeria, saying, the country is blessed with a lot of human and natural resources that could boost the economy if well harnessed.

The United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr Stuart Symington who gave the advice on Monday when he paid a courtesy visit to the Director-General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan said that tapping into the country’s resources and investing in them would improve the economy.

He said, “Nigeria is filled with places, creatures of beauty; the citizens should appreciate God’s blessings in the country and guard the resources jealously.

The Naira on Wednesday depreciated to N360.16 to the dollar at the investor’s window, losing 70kobo from N360.09 traded on Tuesday. Trading at the parallel market saw the naira closed at N362 to the dollar, while the Pound Sterling and the Euro closed at N514 and N445, respectively.

The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele, left Nigeria for Washington DC on Sunday to join other economic experts from around the world to discuss issues affecting global economy. Discussions would take place under the auspices of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

South Africa’s inflation rate fell to seven-year low in March, moving further below the midpoint of the central bank’s target range.

Inflation slowed to 3.8 percent from a year earlier compared with 4 percent in February, Pretoria-based Statistics South Africa said Wednesday in a report on its website. The median estimate of 20 economists was 4.1 percent in a Bloomberg survey. Prices rose 0.4 in the month.

Price growth has remained within the central bank’s target range of 3 percent to 6 percent for a 12th consecutive month, the longest run since 2015. The Reserve Bank projects inflation will remain within the band until at least 2020, stabilizing at just more than 5 percent, according to the Monetary Policy Review released April 11.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that the international oil market could become too tight if supply remains restrained by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies as global oil stocks have diminished. The IEA, which coordinates the energy policies of industrialized nations, said stocks in developed countries, could fall to their five-year average – a metric used by OPEC to measure the success of output cuts – as early as May.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted that Nigerian economy will grow from 0.8 per cent in 2017 to 2.1 per cent by the end 2018, while warning of possible crash in crude oil prices.

According to its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) Report launched in Washington DC on Tuesday, the Fund projected that Nigeria will also grow by 1.9 per cent in 2019.

The Chief Executive Officer of Med-View Airline Plc, Alhaji Muneer Bankole has lamented the high cost of aviation fuel in Nigeria, saying it now posed a big challenge to the operations of domestic airlines.

Bankole told journalists in Lagos on Sunday that his airline alone spent about N22 billion to procure aviation fuel in the last five years.

“For instance, aviation fuel is presently being sold by marketers at N220 per litre in Lagos and N270 per litre in places like Maiduguri because some marketers don’t want to go there due to security issues,” he said.