Daily Watch – CBN to start loan scheme for graduates, No census next year

11th December 2015

  • The CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, has announced that a low-interest loan scheme for one million young graduates will take off next year. Emefiele said the scheme, which would be managed by the CBN in collaboration with commercial banks, was part of a government strategy to boost the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises sub-sector and curtail unemployment among the youth.
  • The National Population Commission has announced that the conduct of a comprehensive National Census in 2016 is not feasible due to factors beyond the commission. The Federal Commissioner representing Enugu State on the Board of the Commission, Dr Festus Uzor, said the commission needs more time to prepare for the census as it requires 1.1 million enumerators and over 50,000 supervisors to effectively cover the country. He said the earliest feasible time for the census will be in 2017.
  • The naira fell to 257 against the US dollar at the parallel market on Thursday. The naira has been falling since last Wednesday when the Central Bank of Nigeria stopped the sale of foreign exchange to some Bureaux de Change operators for failing to render returns on the utilisation of previous forex purchases. The exclusion of the BDCs from the weekly forex sale has been creating shortage of dollars, causing the dollar to rise at the parallel market. However, the local currency traded at 198.97 to the dollar at the official interbank market on Thursday. The naira-dollar exchange rate has been moving between 197 and 199 at the official interbank market since February.