RIYADH: A third of middle-market Saudi businesses expect to grow by at least 10 percent this year and more than half will hire extra full-time staff, a new survey suggests.

Saudi companies are significantly more optimistic about revenue growth than they were last year, according to the EY Growth Barometer, an annual survey of entrepreneurs’ and business leaders’ growth strategies produced by the global professional services company Ernst & Young.

“Company leaders ... in Saudi Arabia are riding a wave of ambition and confidence, as set out by Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program,” said Fahad Altoaimi, EY’s Saudi Arabia managing partner.

“Contrary to the common belief that regulation stifles innovation, Saudi executives believe that reforms set out by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have been driving change and growth.

“This is very encouraging for Saudi businesses — one of the key goals of Vision 2030 was to increase participation from middle-market businesses in the economy.”

Attitudes to new technology have also evolved rapidly. In 2017, 94 percent of Saudi respondents to the EY survey said they would never adopt robotic process automation. Now, 82 percent say they will have adopted AI by 2020 and implemented robotic process automation, with 95 percent of respondents planning to do so within five years.

According to the EY survey, Saudi business leaders also see the need to expand beyond the Kingdom if they are to become market leaders. Overseas expansion is the leading growth priority for 29 percent of respondents, while 18 percent of middle-market businesses are aiming to grow at home.

Saudi business leaders are also on a hiring spree, with 58 percent looking to recruit more full-time staff. The greatest talent need, however, is more diversity, cited by 62 percent of Saudi Arabian respondents.
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With the growing demand for the improvement of the agricultural sector as a viable income generating industry and the need to diversify the Nigerian economy, the Zebra Group through its subsidiary, Zebra Agro-industries is expanding its agro initiatives by investing $1.1 million USD in agro-industrial operations focused on vegetable oil and animal feed processing over the course of 2016 (within Nigeria's south-eastern region).

As the fear of Lassa fever spreads across states, business has continued to boom for sellers of rat killers.

Rats are known to be hosts of the Lassa virus. The virus is contracted through the consumption of food exposed to rat droppings or urine.


Mrs. Titilayo Oyinkan who sells rat killers in Oshodi area of Lagos State said the fear of rats had increased her customers.

Oyinkan said, ‘‘I sell more rat killers now. Housewives mostly patronise me. It is just that I cannot pray for the disease to continue but it has made many people to see the need to kill the rats in their houses. I sell about 20 pieces of rat killers every day. I used to sell about seven or eight before the disease started.’’

Also, Bright who sells rat killers in the Ikeja axis of the state said there was a high demand for the toxic substances since the fresh outbreak of the disease.

Also, another seller of rat killers who identified himself as Ilori Hassan, said he sells more now than when there was no outbreak of the disease.

On her part, Mrs. Tolulope Oyede-Abioye, said she now buys rat killers to eliminate the rats in her house.

A growing Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria has killed 101 people, as the country continues to battle to contain a flare up of the virus,

Nigeria’s economy, reeling from the drop in oil prices, is expected to grow by 3.78 percent this year, up from 2.97 percent in 2015, as it tries to confront its worst crisis in decades, the national bureau of statistics said on Thursday.

The statistics office expected growth to reach an average of 5.41 percent yearly between 2017 and 2019 as infrastructure development provide support for both the oil and non-oil sectors, it said.
“Output in the oil and non-oil sectors are expected to perform marginally better relative to 2015,” the bureau said in a report, explaining its forecast.

Africa’s top oil producer has been hit hard by a slump in oil prices, which has eroded public finances and weakened its currency.
The naira currency has weakened 35 percent below its official level on the black market, weighed down by sinking oil prices and speculation that Africa’s biggest economy will have to formally devalue.
President Muhammadu Buhari is against devaluation, backing the central bank’s stance of keeping rates unchanged in the face of sharp falls against the dollar on the black market.
“Speculative pressure on the naira is likely to exist in 2016 in light of the current state of foreign reserves and inflation may rise to 10.16 by year end,” the report said.
Last week, Nigeria’s foreign reserves fell to $28.2 billion, its lowest level since 2005.
The statistics office expects the central bank’s adjustment of the foreign exchange management framework to be steadied this year thus helping prices to gradually ease beyond 2016. Over the 2017 to 2019 period, inflation is expected to average 9.01 percent, it said.
The outlook hit investments. Last year foreign inflows fell to $9.64 billion, down 53.5 percent from $20.75 billion in 2014. The bureau expected the Nigerian economy to benefit from central bank stimulus worth 300 billion naira.

The National Leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, says Nigerians need to be creative and innovative to develop the economy.

He told newsmen in Ibadan on Sunday that the diversification of the nation’s economy was always on the drawing board but had never been implemented.


“We keep talking about diversification of the economy. It is always in the drawing board. We never implemented it.

“There are so many ways to create and revitalise this economy; it is not as bad into the future as people make it appear.

“The past is nauseating, terrible. There has never been any principle of good governance in the past. It has been cesspool of corruption,” he said.

The former Lagos State governor said that Nigerians needed to support and encourage the present administration in its campaign against insurgency and kidnap.

“We face the challenge. We accept the need for the diversification of the nation’s economy. “ There are a lot of variables in the oil sector which we have to look at critically.

“We are not the only country that is affected by the effect of this oil crisis. We have to be more creative in a way that will not hurt the welfare of the people,” he said.

“We need to look inwardly. There are so many ways and we are blessed to really create local demand, improve our disposable income and manage our own economy.

“We have the resources, people and the blessing of both weather and mineral resources but it will take time.

“There is a gestation, rearrangement and reengineering necessary for the economy to be beneficial to the people.

“We must be patient, we must persevere and the leadership must be creative in order to rejuvenate the economy. Just bear with us,” he added.

Speaking on the influx of defectors into the APC, he said that there was the freedom principle which allow citizens to associate with any organisation or political party they want.

Tinubu said that the builders of APC must be tolerant and understand the need to check intrusion of corruption and injustice into the party.

“You can’t stop that. You cannot discriminate against that. There is nothing we can do about that. “We cannot prevent people from coming in, the more the merrier, the better, the competitiveness,” he said.

The National Leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, says Nigerians need to be creative and innovative to develop the economy.

He told newsmen in Ibadan on Sunday that the diversification of the nation’s economy was always on the drawing board but had never been implemented.


“We keep talking about diversification of the economy. It is always in the drawing board. We never implemented it.

“There are so many ways to create and revitalise this economy; it is not as bad into the future as people make it appear.

“The past is nauseating, terrible. There has never been any principle of good governance in the past. It has been cesspool of corruption,” he said.

The former Lagos State governor said that Nigerians needed to support and encourage the present administration in its campaign against insurgency and kidnap.

“We face the challenge. We accept the need for the diversification of the nation’s economy. “ There are a lot of variables in the oil sector which we have to look at critically.

“We are not the only country that is affected by the effect of this oil crisis. We have to be more creative in a way that will not hurt the welfare of the people,” he said.

“We need to look inwardly. There are so many ways and we are blessed to really create local demand, improve our disposable income and manage our own economy.

“We have the resources, people and the blessing of both weather and mineral resources but it will take time.

“There is a gestation, rearrangement and reengineering necessary for the economy to be beneficial to the people.

“We must be patient, we must persevere and the leadership must be creative in order to rejuvenate the economy. Just bear with us,” he added.

Speaking on the influx of defectors into the APC, he said that there was the freedom principle which allow citizens to associate with any organisation or political party they want.

Tinubu said that the builders of APC must be tolerant and understand the need to check intrusion of corruption and injustice into the party.

“You can’t stop that. You cannot discriminate against that. There is nothing we can do about that. “We cannot prevent people from coming in, the more the merrier, the better, the competitiveness,” he said.

The Federal Government, yesterday, stated that the low price of crude oil had presented an opportunity for Nigeria to save up to $5 billion, about N1 trillion as it would no longer have to pay for subsidy for Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, also known as petrol.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who was speaking in a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, however, stated that Nigeria is in dire straits on how to finance the deficit in the 2016 budget.



He said, “Lower oil prices also mean there is some advantage. The decline means that we are not paying any subsidies, which frees up something in the order of about $5 billion.”

He added that Nigeria would still face challenges in financing its budget deficit and aims to increase value-added tax and customs duty collection to help plug the gap.

“We think with adequate governance around budget management and around expenditure management, we can do quite a bit. If we are able to do those things, we might be able to come away with under $30 per barrel oil,” Osinbajo noted.

However, despite the gains to the country, the low price of crude oil and lack of policy direction in Nigeria, has continued to take its toll on companies in Nigeria, as Shoreline Group, an operator in the Nigerian energy sector, yesterday, said it would sack 700 of its staff, while it also suspended its planned $500 million Eurobond.

Chief Executive Officer of the Shoreline Group, Mr. Kola Karim, explained thatwith Brent crude trading below $30 a barrel and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, imposing restrictions on the amount of dollars businesses can obtain, Shoreline plans to cut 35 percent of its nearly 2,000 staff to survive the tough conditions.

He said, “We went on a roadshow and the world of oil collapsed. We are going to wait until end of first quarter and see how stable markets are. Mid-last year, our projections were $60-dollar oil for the next five years.”

Karim said Shoreline would switch its focus to gas production and distribution within Lagos, especially as it costs the company more than $20 to produce a barrel of oil.

He further explained that with a government-mandated price of $3.69 per standard cubic foot of gas to encourage local producers to sell to Nigerian consumers such as power plants, Shoreline is in talks with the African Finance Corporation, African Development Bank and African Export-Import Bank to get them to lend $500 million to finance the projects, which include 125 kilometers, about 78 miles of pipeline.

“That is a local business that is tied to dollars, but is not fluctuating. More importantly, there is no downside to it because the country needs gas to energize its growth’ so that is a secure business.”

Meanwhile, succour came the way of Nigeria in terms of crude oil sales, yesterday, as Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) doubled its crude oil purchases from Nigeria, from 1.7 million tons per annum to three million tons in 2016 on a term or fixed contract.

The purchases, which is partly aimed at diversifying IOC’s sources of supplies, is coming on the heels of the term contracts the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, signed with some companies for 991,000 barrels per day of Nigeria’s crude oil.

To this end, IOC is the only Asian companies to have been offered a term contract by Nigeria, following the overhaul of the crude oil contracts, where the NNPC prefer to sell directly to international refineries, trading houses and local downstream firms.

IOC was among the firms chosen for the contract alongside refiners like Spain’s Cepsa, Italy’s Saras, and ENOC of the United Arab Emirates. On the list were also trading houses Trafigura, Mercuria and Vitol and international oil companies ENI, Total, Exxon and Shell.

China’s Sinopec and its trading arm Unipec, which are large buyer of Nigerian oil, do not figure in the list.
Prior to the agreement, IOC, India’s largest refinery, buys some eight million tons a year of crude oil from Nigeria; most of which is bought from spot or current markets where prices are subject to extreme volatilities.

A term contract offers not just assured supplies but also cheaper price as the rate is based on official selling price of exporting country.

IOC Chairman, Mr. Shri Ashok said Nigeria chose the companies from their track records and trading experience to ensure that its crude cargoes are not left unsold.

Ashok said crude purchases are based on techno-commercial viability. “A crude has to be commercially viable for me to buy and also technically feasible for our refineries to process,” he stated.

India’s oil Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan said Nigeria crude oil grade is low sulphur and suits Indian refineries.

Nigeria is India’s third biggest oil supplier, selling 11.59 million tons in first half of current fiscal. It was behind only Saudi Arabia (19.56 million tons) and Iraq (17.01 million tons) in terms of supplies.

Naira on Monday depreciated further at the parallel market amid growing shortage of the currency. The Naira lost N5 to exchange at N297 to the dollar, representing a depreciation of 1.7 per cent.



It traded previously for N292 to the dollar over the weekend and at the official interbank window, the dollar remained at N197. Traders at the market expressed concerns at the widening gap between the price of foreign exchange at the official interbank window and that at the parallel market.

They were, however, hopeful that the directive of the apex bank to money deposit banks to reopen domiciliary accounts could redress the shortage of dollars.

Nigeria earned N3.27 trillion from the oil and gas sector in 10 months, between January and October 2015, data obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has revealed.

The CBN, in its Economic Report for October 2015, disclosed that oil and gas revenue in the 10-month period accounted for 55.93 per cent of the N5.847 trillion total federally collected revenue in the period under review.

In addition to revenue from oil and gas, the country also recorded non-oil revenue of N2.577 trillion, representing 44.1 per cent of federally-collected revenue from January to October 2015.

Giving a breakdown of components of the country’s oil revenue, the report stated that Nigeria earned N737.5 billion from crude oil and gas sales; N1.289 trillion from Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT)/Royalties; N1.159 trillion from domestic crude oil/gas sales and N85 billion from other unlisted sources.

On a month-by-month basis, the report revealed Nigerian earned as follows:

January – N486.4 billion; February – N359.7 billion; March – N364.6 billion; April – N286.2 billion; May – N267.2 billion and June – N285.6 billion respectively. Others are July – N369.4 billion, August – N314.9 billion, September – N265.2 billion and October – N271.1 billion respectively.

In terms of federally-collected revenue on a month-by-month basis, the CBN report showed the country collected for January, February, March, April and May, the sum of N692.1 billion, N554.8 billion, N808.7 billion, N472.2 billion and N462.5 billion respectively.

While N462.6 billion, N679.3 billion, 682.6 billion, N533.1 billion and N499.4 billon were collected in the months of June, July, August, September and October 2015 respectively.

In its analysis of the financials, CBN said the N499.37 billion collected in October was lower than both the monthly budget estimate and the receipt in September by 38.7 per cent and 6.3 per cent, respectively, which it attributed to the shortfall in receipts from oil and non-oil revenue, during the month of October.

In addition, the CBN stated that Nigeria’s crude oil production, including condensates and natural gas liquids, stood at an average of 2.02 million barrels per day (mbd) or 62.62 million barrels (mb) in October. It added that this represented an increase of 0.04 mbd or 2.0 per cent above the average of 1.98 mbd or 59.40 mb, recorded in the preceding month.

In his bid to ensure the successful take off of the social protection programmes promised by his administration, President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the appointment of Mrs. Maryam Uwais as his Special Adviser for Social Protection Plan.

Uwais, a lawyer with over 20 years’ experience, is said to have already started work in the office of the Vice President.

A top Presidency official who pleaded anonymity disclosed this to selected journalists in Abuja on Sunday.


The official said the 2016 Budget proposal was loaded with provisions for the implementation of the social programmes, hence the reason why “the Presidency is seeing the current controversy in the Senate regarding two versions of the proposed budget as a distraction and a storm in a tea cup.”

“The budget sent out by the Presidency is a bunch of proposals which would only become sacrosanct relatively after it has become an appropriation. To now have all this hue and cry on alleged versions, and switched copies is not just a distraction, but a storm in a tea cup,” he said.

For instance, the official said a provision had been made in the budget to grant a one-time soft loan of about N60,000 each to one million market women, men and artisans in 2016.

The official said there were important components in the budget proposals which should be discussed including the soft loan, which he said, was the micro-credit component of the Buhari’s Social Protection programmes.

This component, according to the official, will gulp about N60bn and is one of a six-point social protection programme of the administration.

He added that the details of the implementation of the micro-credit scheme were being worked out and would be rolled out once the budget must have been approved by the National Assembly.

He also said there were five other social protection schemes identified to be coordinated by Uwais with an effective inter-ministerial involvement.

“Besides the micro-credit scheme, there are five other social investment plans of the Buhari administration already provided for in the budget with about N500bn, or an unprecedented nine per cent of the total budget.

“It is believed that this is the first time that the Federal Government is spending this much on targeted social welfare scheme,” he said.

He listed the five other schemes to include the Teach Nigeria Scheme; the Youth Employment Agency; the Conditional Cash Transfer Scheme; the Home Grown School Feeding Initiative and Free Education Scheme for Science Students.

Under the Teach Nigeria Scheme, the official said the Federal Government planned to employ 500,000 graduates as teachers.

“Under the scheme, government will hire, train and deploy the graduates to help beef up the quality of teachers in public schools across the nation. The selection of the 500,000 teachers is likely to be on states and FCT basis,” he explained.

Under the youth employment agency, he explained that between 300,000 and 500,000 non-graduate youths would be taken through skill acquisition programmes and vocational training, for which they would be paid stipends during the training.

The trainees, he said, would be expected to become self-productive members of their communities. The selection of the youths for this scheme, according to him, would also be per states and the FCT.

On the Conditional Cash Transfer, the official said government would pay N5,000 per month directly to one million extremely poor Nigerians this year on the condition that they had immunised children enrolled in schools.

While describing the CCT as the most misunderstood of the schemes, he clarified that it would only be for extremely poor people.

He also said the pilot scheme for the homegrown school feeding would start with a number of states drawn from across the country, and then developed to cover the entire country.

In the 2016 proposed budget, provision is said to have been made to implement this year on a pilot scheme basis.

He said the programme also had international supports from the global community including the Imperial College of the United Kingdom.

The Senate Thursday summoned the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, over the continuous depreciation of the naira.

The upper chamber said that Emefiele should appear before it by 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday January 19, 2016 to explain the continuous weakening of Naira against the Dollar.

The invitation followed a Point of Order raised by the Senate Leader, Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume, over the matter.



Senate President, Abubakar Bukola Saraki, asked Senator Ndume to convey Senate’s resolution inviting him to the CBN governor.

Saraki said, “The leader in line with our rules, 42:1 did mention this and in line with our rules also we must get the views of the Senators that we should stand this down till Tuesday next week.

“Leader, you convey and invite the Central Bank Governor to come on Tuesday by 11 to present this before the Senate.’’

Ndume had said it was expedient for the Senate to invite the CBN governor to brief it on the free fall of the naira.

He said, “As a today, naira is exchanged for N305 to one dollar. In view of this worrisome situation and the fact that we all know that this country depends so much on imported materials and even food, there is a need for this Senate to as a matter of urgency call, invite or summon the governor of CBN to explain this situation and to provide the necessary solution to this situation.’’