Daily Watch – Police trust fund takes off, Budget benchmark lowered

Finance minister, Zainab Ahmed, has said that there are “strong indications” of an oversupplied oil market next year, and as a result, has lowered price expectations for the country’s benchmark crude. Ahmed said she had lowered a forecast for the country’s benchmark price to $55 per barrel from $60 per barrel, in part “to cushion against an unexpected price shock.” Nigeria is producing about 2.3 million barrels per day of crude oil and condensates, Ahmed said. The country has agreed to a cap of 1.685 million bpd of crude oil with the OPEC.

Interswitch is in talks with potential anchor investors as it’s concluding plan for a stock-market listing in London later this year. Bloomberg reported that the company is planning to kick off the share sale as soon as November. An IPO could value the company at as much as $1.5 billion. No agreements have been reached, however, and the structure of any deal is still being deliberated by Interswitch. The firm, which is majority-owned by Helios Investment Partners, is also considering a sale, though it prefers a stock-market listing, the people said. Roping in anchor investors would help drum up demand for Interswitch’s listing and buoy its valuation at a time when some fund managers are staying away from the U.K. stock market amid Brexit uncertainties. John Maguire, Interswitch’s chief financial officer, declined to comment on details of the IPO plans.

The IMF has expressed concern over the rise in trade uncertainty in Nigeria and many other economies amid the escalating trade tensions between the US and China. Concerns about global trade have reached nearly 10 times the peaks seen in previous decades and could shave about 0.75 percentage point off world economic growth this year. The Washington-based fund cited the uncertainty on Monday in its World Economic Outlook, as a driving factor for “sluggish global growth”. While unveiling a new index that tracks trade uncertainty across 143 countries, IMF described the World Trade Uncertainty index as “the first effort to create a trade uncertainty index for a large set of advanced and developing economies.” The index shows increased uncertainty starting around the Q3 of 2018, coinciding with tariff increases by the US and China. It then declined in the Q4 2018 as both countries announced a deal to halt the escalation of tariffs in December. After a brief respite the index rocketed up in the first quarter of 2019, reflecting a substantial increase of U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports on March 1, the IMF said.

President Buhari has signed the Nigeria Police Trust Fund Act 2019 which means that companies operating in Nigeria will now contribute 0.005 percent of their profits after-tax to the newly formed Nigeria Police Trust Fund which is aimed at improving funding and training of personnel of the force. The NPTF would also consist of an amount constituting 0.5 percent of the total revenue accruing to the federal account. The fund would consist any take-off grant and special intervention fund as may be provided by the three tiers of government to meet its objective by the National Assembly in the budget as aids, grants and assistance from international bilateral and multilateral agencies, non-governmental organisations and the private sector. According to the Act, the fund would cover all personnel of the NPF, including its auxiliary staff in Nigeria and abroad. However, it would only operate for six years from the commencement of the Act and shall, at the expiration of that period, cease to exist unless it is extended for any further period by an Act of the National Assembly.