Daily Watch – PENGASSAN likely to end strike, IMF forecasts decline

12th July 2016

  • Nigeria’s economy will probably contract this year as energy shortages and the delayed budget weigh on output, according to the IMF. “I think there is a high likelihood that the year 2016 as a whole will be a contractionary year,” Gene Leon, the fund’s resident representative in Nigeria, said. While the economy should look better in second half of the year, growth will probably not “be sufficiently fast, sufficiently rapid to be able to negate the outcome of” the first and second quarters, he said. Nigeria’s economy shrunk by 0.4 percent in the three months through March, the first contraction in more than a decade.
  • Trading by banks on behalf of their clients on NIFEX has shown increased forex allocation to the importation of raw materials and industrial machines by manufacturers. A review of the returns on forex utilisation and source of funds for the week ended July 1, published by some commercial banks, revealed an increase in the volume of forex allocations to the sector. Most of the recipients were corporate customers who bought American dollars from the bank for the importation of industrial raw materials and spare parts, among others.
  • PENGASSAN is likely to call off a five-day-old nationwide strike following a successful meeting with the FG yesterday in Abuja, Thisday is reporting. The paper says a meeting held at the office of the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu on Monday, successfully addressed all save for one of the issues which made the union embark on the industrial action. A second meeting to address the outstanding issue will be held at the office of the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige today.