Nigeria: Press focuses on Organised Labour mobilizing for protest, others

APA – Lagos (Nigeria)
The report that the Organised Labour on Monday began mobilising its members for a nationwide protest slated for February 27 and 28 over the cost of living crisis in the country is one of the trending stories in Nigerian newspapers on Tuesday.
The Punch reports that the organised Labour on Monday began mobilising its members for a nationwide protest slated for February 27 and 28 over the cost of living crisis in the country.
Sources in the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress told our correspondents that the National Executive Council met via Zoom on Friday, February 16, to review the resolution of the National Action Council of the NLC and the Trade Union Congress via-a-vis organised labour agreement with the Federal Government.
Rising from the crucial meeting, the labour unions, sources said, agreed to demand the implementation of the agreement with the Federal Government without further delay.
“The NLC at its Zoom meeting held on Friday, February 16, 2024, resolved in line with the resolution of NAC of NLC and that of the TUC, which demands that the agreement between the leadership of the two labour centres and government be implemented without further delay,” a source told The PUNCH.
The Federal Government’s failure to fulfil its promises after the 14-day ultimatum by Labour, according to sources, will be met with two-day nationwide protest already slated for February 27 and 28.
The Head of Information of the NLC, Benson Upah, who confirmed the resolution of the meeting, told one of our correspondents on the telephone that the NLC affiliates were being mobilised for the protest just as state chapters of the congress vowed to join the nationwide demonstration.
Upah told one of our correspondents that the protest would be held as planned and agreed at the meeting.
The newspaper says that no less than 59.1 per cent of capital importation into the country in 2023, amounting to $2.31bn, was foreign loans, according to the latest capital importation report released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
According to the report, foreign capital inflow rose from $654.65m in Q3 2023 to $1.09bn in the final quarter of the year.
Although Nigeria recorded a total foreign investment of $3.91bn in 2023, a breakdown showed that the country got $433.87m in Q1; $771.53m in Q2; $507.71m in Q3 and $594.75m in Q4 as foreign loans and the same amount borrowed in 2022.
Further analysis indicated that the value of foreign loans received by the country in Q3 2023 was 18 per cent lower compared to the $619.16m recorded in the same quarter of the previous year. Moreover, there was a 34.19 per cent decline relative to the $771.53m secured in Q2 2023. This decrease was attributed to the current government’s preference for domestic borrowing.
The report further stated that Nigeria got $627.4m from other equity; $474.1m from bonds; $428.9m from money market instruments; $65.9m from other claims, $1.91m through currency deposits and $51,000 from other capitals.
The Vanguard newspaper reports that Africa saw the pace of economic growth sag last year as inflation continued to rise but is set to rebound this year, the African Development Bank said Friday.
In its latest report on the state of the continent’s economy, the AfDB said that Africa had yet to benefit from falling inflation seen in other parts of the world.
Instead, average inflation increased by 3.6 percentage points, to 17.8 percent last year, the highest rate in a decade. “Inflationary pressures in Africa remain entrenched and have eroded people’s purchasing power and adversely affected livelihoods,” the bank’s president, Akinwumi Adesina, said in his introduction to the report.
High global interest rates and the depreciation of many African currencies versus the US dollar have also increased debt service costs, constraining investment needed to boost growth and social spending.
While economic growth slowed to 3.2 percent last year, from 4.1 percent in 2022, according to the AfDB’s calculations, this still makes it the world’s second-fastest-growing region after Asia.
The AfDB noted that 15 African countries posted growth rates of higher than five percent thanks to higher investment spending, a recovery in tourism and a strong performance by the mining sector.
“Despite the growth slowdown in 2023, the continent’s economies remain resilient, with growth in 2024 projected to rise to 3.8 percent,” the ABD said in its report.
The projected higher growth reflects efforts to diversify economies and boost consumer consumption, it said.
And while the AfDB said it expects medium-term growth prospects to improve, it said risks remain tilted to the downside, reflecting both global and regional uncertainty.
The newspaper says that there are indications that the Nigerian Government may be forced to review the 2024 Appropriation Act as recent developments in the foreign exchange market may have put the financial assumptions in complete disarray.
Sources close to the Finance Ministry told Vanguard that all the major components of the budget has been affected fundamentally by a drastic change in the budget parameters occasioned by the current foreign exchange market realities.
He pointed out that since the budget was passed into law, the official exchange rate benchmark which was N800/USD1 has moved up by almost 50 per cent, a development which has equally doubled both US dollar-based revenue and expenditure.
Consequently, the Naira values have gone up by about 100 per cent. The Senate approved the 2024 Appropriation Bill of N28.7 trillion, against the N27.5 trillion estimate presented by President Bola Tinubu.
The approved budget includes N1.7 trillion for statutory transfers, N8.7 trillion for recurrent expenditure, and N9.9 trillion for capital expenditure. All these figures have now been significantly altered by the development in the benchmark exchange rate which the Senate had moved from N750/ USD1 presented by President Tinubu, to N800/ USD1.
Though the high level Finance Ministry official said he doesn’t have details of what is being done, he hinted that all the relevant ministries and government agencies are already working on what may become an amendment to the Act.
Financial experts who spoke to Vanguard also indicated that the barely six weeks old budget has suffered a major dislocation following the massive depreciation of the Naira across all foreign exchange market segments.
According to their calculations, the implication on the 2024 budget is double fold with revenue and expenditure rising at the same time.
However, they caution that a more prudent fiscal measure is needed to prevent the worsening of the current economic situation.
GIK/APA