The price of foreign rice may fall ahead of this yuletide as the federal government wants to review downward the 110 percent import duty and levy it slammed on the commodity January this year to boost local production.

THE perennial port congestion seems to have defied all solutions that have been proffered by various government committees that were set up for that purpose.

The private sector in the country is to finance the construction of the 4th mainland bridge with N220 billion.

Infrastructure development and building strong institution to support agriculture in Nigeria, as well as change in present state of land use and right have been identified as some of the factors necessary for sustainable agriculture in the country.

Some financial experts on Wednesday commended the CBN on its plan to change naira notes from polymer to paper notes in second quarter of 2014.

The ECOWAS Commission has decried the “global trade imbalance against Africa” as the continent’s share of the global trade stood at a paltry 3 per cent. The Commissioner for Trade, Customs, Industry, Mines and Free Movement, Ahmed Hamid, made the remarks at the opening of a workshop on “Trade and Environment” in Abuja.

The previous week, we mentioned that the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, would like to have several more companies listed on the Exchange and we suggested that the NSE could be the lead promoter of one such company that would eventually be listed on the Exchange. One expects that the NSE would want companies whose operations yield profits to be listed.

United States-based, CAMAC Energy Inc.is concluding plans to acquire the remaining economic interests that it does not currently own in the production sharing contract covering Oil Mining Leases 120 and 121 offshore Nigeria.

The above is typical of a lot of retail investors. They have urgent need for money, and in the absence of any immediate source of cash, they decide to sell their shares. Their expectation, based on lack of understanding, is that they can go to the stock market hand over the shares to a broker, who will immediately give cash in return. For some, they don’t even have any clue about how to sell their shares. They never bother, until there is urgent need for money.

Town planning authorities in the various states of the country have been accused of granting approvals for the siting of petrol stations in illegal locations, thereby jeopardising the work of the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR.

Mixed reactions have continued to greet last week’s announcement by the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke that the four government-owned refineries would be privatised before the end of the first quarter of 2014.

New investors in the power sector are contemplating ending the Credited Advance Payment for Metering scheme, CAPMI, on account of the low response by electricity consumers.

The Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, has said that Nigeria has made significant progress in its shift away from oil and enhancing the development of the non-oil sector.

Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar has said that the Federal Government is set to develop a new National Dredging Programme that will address the challenges of flooding in the country as well as to ensure continuous maintenance of the nation’s water channels.

The regulatory authorities are trying their best, but one thing I will tell you about Nigerians is that immediately a law is made, some people will sit down to study the loopholes and will start taking advantage of weak points in it.