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Instablog9ja
34 m
10
A Businessman has said it seems the rest of us are stuck in Nigeria .
He made this assertion as he bewailed the reality of spending N30m-N50m to relocate abroad and start from scratch at 30.
Instablog9ja
2 hrs
15
Reno Omokri has told Dele Momodu why Nigeria’s economy isn’t collapsing but projecting growth.
He said, I read your open letter to President Bola Tinubu, in which you said, “Our economy has virtually collapsed”, among other things
Respectfully, the facts do not support your assertions, and in your open letter, you did not provide any facts. Only opinions. So, please let me present some facts that contradict your opinions.
Firstly, only yesterday, the International Monetary Fund projected that due to the reforms being undertaken by the current administration, Nigeria will have a 3.1% GDP growth rate in 2024.This is one of the best projections for an African country in 2024, and does not signal an economy that has ‘virtually collapsed.’
Secondly, Nigeria had a record high of N6.52 trillion trade surplus in the first quarter of 2024. This has never happened before. We routinely had trade deficits in the past. This means that because of the monetary reforms by the current government, Nigeria is now exporting significantly more than it is importing, and the growth is largely in the non-oil sector.
For example, Nigeria is now a net exporter of clement to Europe and a growing exporter of refined petroleum products to Europe and West African states. Ghana, a fellow petroleum exporting country, is largely dependent on LPG from Nigeria. This projects growth, not collapse.
Thirdly, in terms of revenue, all Nigerian states, bar none, have received significantly higher federal allocations since May 29, 2023, than they were receiving under the Buhari regime. Each state now gets at least 45% more federal allocation, with Nasarawa getting almost 100% more and Anambra getting 70% more, whereas their wage bill has not increased. The above projects economic strength rather than collapse.
Fourthly, according to Financial Derivatives (FDC), with a Return on Investment of 22.90%, Nigeria’s Stock Exchange is now the most profitable capital market on Earth, bar none. Please note that. Bar none. The National Bureau of Statistics has also corroborated this. For the first time in our history, the all-share index (ASI) of the Nigerian Stock Exchange crossed the 100,000 mark in 2024.
I would not categorise such growth as collapse, and I am sure investors who smiled to the bank would not either.
Fifthly, capital inflow into Nigeria increased by 66.27% this year. This is probably why Fitch and S&P Global Ratings upgraded Nigeria’s economy to a Stable B, and why foreign inflows into the capital market jumped fivefold in the first quarter of 2024 to N93.37 billion from 18.12 billion in the same period last year.
Sixthly, despite clearing the backlog of foreign exchange debts owed to foreign airlines and other foreign investors by the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigeria’s foreign reserve hit a year-to-date high of an estimated $34 billion this year. How can a nation with such a healthy reserve be said to be on the verge of economic collapse?
Finally, the Student Loan promised is now a reality and is being disbursed. That means Nigeria is about to witness a dramatic increase in its human resources, as more youths will have access to education.
Therefore, bearing the above in mind, is it not possible, egbon Dele, that you may have focused too much on assumption and too little on facts to come to your conclusion that Nigeria’s economy is collapsing?
Instablog9ja
3 hrs
10
An Irish man has lamented following a viral video of a Nigerian lady showing how her family emigrated to Ireland.
He said a Nigerian man came to Ireland and applies for asylum, then he got approval for family reunification and brings his wife and 7 children to Ireland. However the man felt they are being overrun and what the Nigerian man did is not sustainable as Nigeria has the highest numbers of immigrants in Ireland
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Investopedia
6 hrs
12
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The number of people applying for unemployment insurance for the first time surged last week, nearly twice the pace economists expected.
Some 20,000 more people applied for unemployment insurance last week, growing to 243,000 total. That's far more than the 229,000 total economists surveyed by the and expected.
Total new claims matched the highest number reported so far this year, which was first reported early last month.
The jump comes as the Federal Reserve is starting to keep a particular eye on the labor market. As inflation comes down and the labor market softens, central bankers want to ensure that unemployment doesn't jump.
"Jobless claims came in higher than expected and that’s a reminder of the main risk to the current economic expansion and bull market," wrote Chris Zaccarelli, Chief Investment Officer for Independent Advisor Alliance.
However, the weekly jobless claim number is highly volatile and prone to large swings. Economists typically use a rolling average of initial jobless claims to get a more stable measure. The four-week moving average was up 1,000 from the previous week to 234,750."Recent data are indicative of a modest softening in the labor market, but there is no cause for alarm just yet," wrote Moody's Analytic Economist Dante DeAntonio. "Despite the recent volatility, the four-week moving average of initial claims was essentially unchanged from the June payroll reference period to that for July."
Most of the labor market's recent slowdown has been in hiring, DeAntonio wrote, which is exactly what the Federal Reserve intended when it set out to fight inflation. The central bank has set its influential fed funds rate at a 23-year high for the past 12 months to make borrowing more costly for businesses and consumers. As borrowing is discouraged, so is spending, which brings down inflation, the Fed theory goes.
"To the extent that the job market remains robust and unemployment levels remain low, the economy will continue to expand – albeit at a slowing pace – and that is what will continue to propel this bull market to new heights, even if there is some volatility and pullbacks along the way," Zaccarelli wrote.
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Investopedia
8 hrs
9
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M&T Bank (MTB) shares finished Thursday higher after the bank beat expectations with its second-quarter results.
The firm reported earnings per share (EPS) of $3.73 on revenue of more than $2.3 billion, down from $5.05 per share on revenue of $2.6 billion a year earlier. The results beat analyst estimates in both cases.
Net interest income was $1.72 billion, down 4% from $1.79 billion a year earlier. The bank’s average loans and leases rose by $792 million, while its average investment securities increased $1.1 billion in the period.
M&T stock finished the day up about 1.7%, leaving them up more than 20% this year. The KBW Nasdaq Regional Banking Index (KRX) fell 1.5%.
The company grew its commercial and industrial and consumer-loan portfolios while reducing its exposure to commercial real-estate, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Daryl Bible said in a statement.
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Investopedia
10 hrs
12
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Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI unveiled GPT-4o mini, its latest artificial intelligence (AI) model that is smaller and lower cost than its predecessors, in a move that could help advance the AI pioneer's position in the AI race.
GPT-4o mini offers some of the capabilities of OpenAI's larger models at a lower cost, and could appeal to those looking for AI systems for specific uses that don't require the same computing power as bigger models, which could attract new customers and expand the company's AI leadership.
OpenAI claimed that GPT-4o mini outperformed GPT-3.5 Turbo, the company's previous task-specific model, as well as some competitors' small model offerings including Google parent Alphabet's (GOOGL) Gemini Flash and Amazon-backed (AMZN) Anthropic's Claude Haiku.
While GPT-4o mini outperformed its small model peers in several benchmarks, it still lagged OpenAI's larger GPT-4o.
The company did not compare GPT-4o mini's performance to that of Microsoft's small model, Phi-3 Mini. As a major OpenAI investor, Microsoft could potentially stand to benefit from OpenAI's gains from GPT-4o mini.
GPT-4o mini's low cost and better performance compared to alternative small models could attract more customers to OpenAI. The small model could also be especially beneficial to OpenAI as an Apple (AAPL) partner as a new AI-supercharged iPhone model is expected in the coming months.
The new model is available to ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Teams users as of Thursday, as well as developers. Enterprise users are set to have access starting next week.
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