Two Chinese companies have held a groundbreaking ceremony to start the construction of a subsea pipeline installation for Dangote Oil Refining Company Limited in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub. Top officials of the Nigerian Dangote’s Group, Xie Xianju, Deputy General Manager of China Harbor Engineering Co (Nigeria) and Zhang Qing, General Manager of China’s Offshore Oil Engineering Company (COOEC) attended the ceremony on Friday, near the Lekki Free Trade Zone (LFTZ).

President and Chief Executive of Dangote Industries Limited, Aliko Dangote, has again been named Africa’s richest man by Forbes, for the seventt year running.

Dangote networth is put at about $12.2 billion, an increase of $100 million a year ago.

Forbes said: “Dangote is looking beyond cement, his most valuable asset, and has been investing in a fertiliser production company and a large oil refinery. Dangote Fertiliser is expected to start operations in the second quarter this year.”

It would be recalled that Dangote was also recently the only African selected among Bloomberg’s world 50 best persons in the year 2017.

Market Operators in the Power Sector have reported that Distribution Companies owe them about N165.2 bn. According to the latest data obtained from MO, which is an arm of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, the debt or shortfall, in terms of stipulated remittances to the market, grew by N6.41bn between October and November last year.

Flour Mills of Nigeria will market a share sale to existing investors on Jan. 15 to raise N39.86 billion (130 million dollars).

The Nigeria Stock Exchange has granted the approval for the right issue.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that the flour and pasta maker will offer 1.47 billion shares at 27 Naira a piece, an 18.2 per cent discount to Thursday’s market price of 33 Naira.

Bank Indonesia is taking a firm stance against cryptocurrencies as it urges all parties to refrain from owning, selling or trading the tokens. “Owning virtual currencies is very risky and inherently speculative,” the central bank said in a statement on Saturday. The digital tokens “are prone to forming asset bubbles and tend to be used as method for money laundering and terrorism funding, so it has the potential to affect financial-system stability and harm the public.”

Honeywell FlourMills Plc and Cement Company of Northern Nigeria, CCNN, and 54 other companies that recorded varying degree of price increase today buoyed the equities capitalisation by N436 billion as the market continues to gallop. Honeywell FlourMills Plc, which led the pack, rose by 9.97 percent to close at N3.20 from N2.91.

Senator Hadi Sirika, Minister of State for Aviation, on Friday said the Nigerian economy would retain over N20 billion annually through local C-Checks on Boeing 737-300, B737-400 and B737-500 aircrafts. Sirika said this in Lagos after a successfully conducted Boeing B737-500 C-Check in Nigeria, which was carried out by Aero Contractors’ Aircraft Maintenance Organisation (AMO) at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos.

Bureaux De Change (BDC) operators in the country are struggling to survive following a drop in margins caused by uncompetitive dollar selling rate from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The development has lead to a downsizing of their workforce by most of the operators.

The CBN sells $20,000 dollars twice per week at N360 per dollars to each of the 3,500 BDCs across the country.

The Nigeria Stock Exchange, NSE yesterday continued its record breaking performance with total market capitalisation rising by N437 billion, thus extending investors gain to N1.7 trillion in the first eight trading days of the year.

Driven by rally from both local and foreign investors, the Nigeria Stock Exchange, yesterday’s performance jerked up the NSE All Share Index, to 43,041.54 points, the highest in nine years.

Specifically, the All share Index significantly appreciated by 1,125.43 points or 2.9 percent from 41,816.11 points on Wednesday, the highest since October 2009.

In the same vein, market capitalisation (total values of shares), which opened at N14. 8 trillion increased by N437 billion to close at N15.317 billion.

The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Tuesday crossed over 40,000 mark for the first time after October 2014 following sustained gains by blue chips. The reports stated that the index closed higher at 40,362.97 compared with 39,849.65 posted on Monday, indicating an increase of 513.32 points or 1.29 per cent. Similarly, the market capitalisation which opened at N14.181 trillion inched N182 billion or 1.28 per cent to close at N14.363 trillion.