For a second day running on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, transactions on Thursday lost ground by 0.96 percent as the bears persisted in the New Year, following persistent selling pressure. The market closed with 13 gainers and 24 losers. The ASI shed 298.74 points to close at 30,771.32 against 31,070.06 achieved on Wednesday with a year-to-date loss of 2.10 percent. The level of activities remained weak as some investors remain on the sidelines, waiting to get things running fully from this week. A total of 169.2 million shares worth ₦1.1 billion were exchanged by investors compared with the 214.4 million worth ₦1.6 billion traded the previous day. More shares of Diamond Bank were sold on Thursday at the market, recording a turnover of 52 million units worth ₦107.2 million.
The FG resumed talks with labour unions on Friday in a bid to avert a planned nationwide industrial action scheduled for tomorrow over the non-implementation of the proposed ₦30,000 minimum wage. The labour leaders are insisting that the Executive must transmit the new minimum wage structure, as agreed to by the presidential tripartite committee, to the National Assembly or risk a resumption of the strike it had earlier suspended. The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige led the Federal Government delegation, which included the minister of finance, Zainab Ahmed, and the minister of budget and national planning, Udo Udoma. Friday’s meeting ended in a deadlock.
The Corporate Affairs Commission has extended the cost reduction of business registration till March 31 to allow more micro, small and medium enterprises to formalize their businesses, which will enable them own corporate account with banks, have access to loans, grants and other government interventions. The CAC announced this Thursday via its twitter handle. The commission also announced the reduction of business name registration from ₦10,000 to ₦5,000 after the Name Reservation of ₦500, with effect from the 31st December, 2018 to 31st March, 2019.
Telecommunications operator, 9mobile, has revealed plans to improve its service delivery by exploring new grounds including Internet of Things and Machine Learning capabilities among others, to drive superior customer experience. Stephane Beuvelet, the company’s acting managing director, said the telco is set to break many new grounds in 2019 by kick-starting a new strategic direction with bold initiatives that guarantee optimum value to customers. Beuvelet also assured that 9mobile would continue the expansion of its 3G and 4G networks to bridge mobile broadband service gap, deliver cloud-enabled services to support SMEs and financial inclusion capabilities.