Daily Watch – Interswitch acquires 60% stake in eClat, Foreign investment in equities rises to $9.48bn
7th November 2019
Data obtained from the Securities and Exchange Commission showed that the value of the foreign portfolio and direct investment in equities amounted to $9.48 billion (₦3.44 trillion) between June 2017 and June 2019. The foreign direct investment in equities stood at $2.42 billion (₦878.45 billion) while foreign portfolio investment in equities stood at $7.05 billion (₦2.56 trillion). According to the data released Wednesday, in the last nine months of 2017, the value of the FDI in equities stood at $769.34 million (₦273 billion), while $1.03 billion (N374 billion) was recorded in 2018; and $465.56 million (₦169 billion) in the first half of 2019. The value of foreign portfolio investment in equities in the last nine months of 2017 stood at $3.54 billion (N1.29 trillion). $2.36 billion (₦857.96 billion) was recorded as the value of the FPI in equities in 2018, while $1.15 billion (₦417.59 billion) was recorded in the first half of 2019. An Ernst and Young report showed that the total FDI into Africa in 2018 stood at $75.5 billion, while that of Nigeria stood at $8 billion, which means the country accounted for 10.59 percent of the total amount of the FDI in Africa in 2018, making it the third-largest destination of the FDI inflow on the continent after Egypt and Algeria. The value of the FDI invested in other sources aside from equities thus stood at $6.97 billion, which was invested in 65 projects and created 10,000 jobs, according to the EY data. The data from EY showed that Lagos State attracted the largest portion of Nigeria’s FDI with a score of 43.
The value of seafood exported by Norway to Nigeria between January and October this year has reached $35 million, the Norwegian Seafood Council has said. The country’s seafood export is the second largest in the world. NSC Director, Trond Kosvelt said Nigeria is its biggest export market in Africa with about 21,500 tons of seafood export. He, however, said that in spite of the huge volume of seafood imports, the country lacks hygienic ways of preserving seafood and as such use substances like Sniper, a pesticide, to store foodstuffs and livestock and stockfish fish which is very dangerous to human health. Worried by this development, he said NSC is holding a forum to educate people about the business of exporting and importing of seafood in Lagos. One of the reasons for the workshop, Kosvelt said was to show non-Norwegians how the Norwegian stockfish is prepared. A Telegraph Market Survey in October showed that the recent closure of Nigeria’s borders has also affected the price of stock-fish and stock-fish head, which increased by over 22 percent.
Interswitch has acquired a 60 percent stake in eClat Healthcare. The deal involves Interswitch acquiring the firm through the purchase of shares from current shareholders and subscription to new shares. CEO of Interswitch, Mitchell Elegbe, said the acquisition aims to improve healthcare delivery in Africa. Founded in 2012, eClat Healthcare specialises in assisting healthcare service providers in planning, designing and operating their unique practices through the deployment of its bespoke healthcare technology platform, designed specifically for the healthcare environment in Africa. The Co-founder/CEO of eClat Healthcare Limited, Wallace Ogufere said the growing adoption of value-based care, combined with the increasing level of usage of patient portals across the industry, has made it critical to take a new approach to patient engagement solution design in Nigeria. They expect to tightly integrate the eClat capabilities into the Interswitch platform, adding functionality that would enable providers to reach their entire patient populations by leveraging existing patient contact information.
On Wednesday, a tax Bill that Senators have not seen, and are not fully aware of its content, passed the second reading at the Senate. The approval is the second in a series of legislative and executive steps to make the Bill become law. The Bill was read for the first time at the Senate on Tuesday. Two senators, Binos Yaroe (PDP, Adamawa South) and Betty Apiafi (PDP, Rivers West) complained about the development, wondering how they would debate and pass a bill whose content they do not know. However, the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, overruled both Senators. The Senate then passed the second reading of the Bill that seeks to increase VAT from five percent to 7.5 percent without copies of the Bill shared to Senators to allow for any meaningful contribution before it was debated and passed. President Buhari had, in October, presented the bill to a joint session of the National Assembly for consideration and passage into law. He made the presentation of the Finance Bill alongside the 2020 Appropriation Bill.