Day: April 3, 2023

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el Sisi visited Saudi Arabia, Saudi state news agency SPA reported on Monday, as Cairo seeks financial inflows to ease pressure on its currency and bolster a faltering economy.

The visit comes amid a major diplomatic realignment in the region, with moves by Saudi Arabia and Egypt to ease tensions with Syria, Iran and Türkiye.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia has long provided financial support to Egypt but recently signalled it would no longer provide such backing without conditions attached, which observers think may have sparked a rare media clash between the two countries.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, met on Sunday with Sisi at the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah, where they discussed bilateral ties and regional developments, SPA reported.

Other Saudi and Egyptian officials, including Saudi national security adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al Aiban and Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, attended the meeting, it added.

Friendly investments

Saudi Arabia and its some Gulf allies have repeatedly come to Egypt’s help since Sisi led the ouster of the former president Mohamed Morsi a decade ago.

When Egypt’s financial difficulties were exposed and exacerbated by the fallout from the war in Ukraine last year, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar made deposits in Egypt’s central bank and pledged major new investments.

But those investments have been slow to materialise, putting new pressure on the Egyptian pound in recent weeks despite the currency’s losing nearly half its value against the dollar since March 2022.

Egypt signed a $3 billion rescue plan with the International Monetary Fund in December that targeted $9.7 billion in foreign direct investment in the financial year ending in June 2023.

Source: TRTworld.com

The Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), says steps are being taken to resolve challenges of knowledge gap of the Free Trade Zones (FTZS) scheme by policymakers and stakeholders.

Prof. Adesoji Adesugba, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NEPZA said this on Sunday in Abuja in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

Adesugba said it would also resolve the intra-agency lukewarm cooperation and non-existence of Offshore Banking System being faced by the authority.

“It is interesting to note that steps are being taken to resolve these challenges so as to free up the scheme for greater exploitation, being a veritable option for revenue generation for the government aside oil and gas,’’ he said.

He said it was evident that the authority’s consistent engagement with owners of zones, enterprises operating in the zones and its stakeholders had brought about the desired confidence of investors in the scheme much more than before.

He said it was able to achieve this through management’s open corporate governance system and with the establishment of three subsets.

The managing director listed the subsets as the NEPZA Alternative Dispute Resolution Centre (ADRC), Special Economic Zones Security (SEZs) and the Nigeria Economic Zones Association (NEZA).

According to him, these three-subsets have been deployed appropriately for the scheme’s sustainability.

On infrastructure development, Adesugba said some interventions were done, aimed at repositioning the status of our free zones for global competitiveness.

“We are aware of the inherent competitions posed by neigbouring countries and so the country has no options than to improve and build fresh infrastructure that can be used to attract investors,’’ he said.

He listed the interventions as Pre-built zone factory building and service plots, Pre-built zone warehouses for storage of raw materials and products and Efficient telecommunication facilities.

Others , he listed as a one-stop-shop administrative centre to handle all investors’ needs, training centres to cater for skills needs, among others and 25 Megawatts of electricity in the Calabar and Kano Free Trade Zones

He also included others as the Special Economic Zones Security (SEZSEC)/Police/DSS posts to provide adequate security in the zones and Construction of internal roads in Kano and Calabar FTZs.

Others are Construction of Investors Suites in Kano KFTZ, digitisation of NEPZA’s operation to enhance service delivery and Federal Government investment in improving outside infrastructure (Rail//Roads/Power).

He described Nigeria as the largest consumer market in Africa with more than 200 million inhabitants.

He said investors were taking advantage of this market while developing their export market.

“We definitely have an edge over our neigbours even as we continue to seek improved budgetary allocation to develop world facilities for the scheme to compete favourably.

Source: News Agency of Nigeria

A 68-year-old businessman, Nelson Gwede, on Monday appeared before a Wuse Zone 2, Abuja Magistrates’ Court charged with defrauding one Agwu Ogbonna of the sum of N115 million.

Ngwede, a resident of Chika, Airport Road, Abuja, is facing a two-count charge bordering on criminal breach of trust and cheating.

The two crimes contravene the provisions of sections 312 and 322 of the Penal Code, according to the prosecutor, Edwin Inegbenoise.

Inegbenoise told the court that the defendant, sometimes in March, introduced himself to the complainant as a “financial facilitator”.

“The defendant convinced the complainant that he was going to introduce him to a facility through which he would get liquid cash.

“The defendant provided an account number 4011441873 owned by OCHKWO HANDRAIL NIGERIA LTD domiciled in Fidelity Bank into which the sum of N100,000,000 was paid by the complainant.

“The defendant also provided another account number carrying his name, Nelson Gwede, with number 3039016860, domiciled in First Bank.

“An additional N15 million was paid into this account in exchange for liquid cash.

“The defendant collected the money through the above mentioned accounts but refused to give the cash equivalent to the complainant as agreed,” he said.

The prosecutor added that the defendant’s actions had affected the complainant and prevented him from carrying out his business transactions.

Inegbenoise said that the defendant, during police investigation, mentioned that one Mr ThankGod, now at large, was responsible for the account into which the sum of N100,000,000 was paid.

At the hearing of the matter, Ngwede pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Magistrate Huzaifa Maccido granted the defendant bail in the sum of N10 million with two sureties in like sum that must reside within the jurisdiction of the court.

Maccido ordered that one of the sureties must be a civil servant on Grade Level 14 while the other must be a businessman.

All sureties must be living in their personal houses, the magistrate ordered.

He, thereafter, adjourned the case until May 17, for hearing.

Source: News Agency of Nigeria

The Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), says that the Free Trade Zones (FTZs) Scheme generated a total of N35.1 billion for government as Customs Duty in 2021.

The authority said the sum of N408.3 million was also remitted as Pay As You Earn (PAYE) taxes in 2021.

Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, Prof. Adesoji Adesugba, the Managing Director, NEPZA said it ensured effective generation of customs duty and administration of taxes applicable in zones operation.

NAN reports that PAYE tax is one of the vital types of taxes in Nigeria that individuals pay to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) within their respective state of residence.

Section 19 of NEPZA Act mandates FTZs enterprises to file returns for statistics and data, while section 8 stipulates that enterprises operating in zones should be exempted from federal, state and local government taxes.

However, they are under obligations to pay all deferred taxes and duties when they extend their businesses to the customs territories.

The NEPZA boss further said that the scheme also generated a total of 19,125 employments in 2021

According to him, a total of 3,000 jobs skills have so far been transferred to Nigerians in 2021.

The managing director explained that the Federal Government approved the establishment of the Special Economic Zones Security (SEZSEC) to be operated by NEPZA.

He said it was for the very reason of creating a viable revenue option to reduce over-dependency on the downstream sector that the Nigerian government adopted the FTZ scheme and created NEPZA with an Act 63 of the parliament in 1992 to regulate and manage it.

“I can confidently say that the authority has done well in the actualisation of its mandate.

“We have experienced a turnaround in the last seven years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration as he continues to show commitment and passion through the Federal Government’s unflinching support for the success of the scheme.

“For instance, in 2017, the present administration buttressed the role of special economic zones in Nigeria’s industrialisation agenda under the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP),” he said.

He said the SEZ model was used to accelerate implementation of the Nigerian Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP), a four – year road map on industrialisation to create jobs and promote exports, which in turn would facilitate economic growth.

“The successes and prospects of the scheme have been in the last few years made manifest as a result of the entrants of private investors,” Adesugba said.

Source: News Agency of Nigeria