1) The Federal Government will sign contracts for Port Harcout-Calabar railway project tomorrow. The Kano-Kaduna own will be signed before the end of the week. Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, also said the Kaduna-Abuja railway has already created 700 jobs. He said Lagos-Ibadan railway project will start before the end of the year, and will be completed in 2 years time. He says we’re moving away from corruption economy to production economy.
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2) A private mining syndicate has made a discovery of high grade Nickel in Kaduna State, Nigeria. This is a major discovery for the ministry of solid mineral who is also planning to start the production of iron ore, lead, zinc, bitumen, coal, and gold in the next 2 to 5 years. The diversification effort is already gathering pace.
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3) Charles Soludo today expressed support for Buhari’s Emergency Economic Bill that is aimed to reduce delay in procurement process and encourage a revival of the economy. He said considering how bad the economy has been destroyed, it would take Nigeria a spending of about N14 – N19 trillion to steer us out of recession. Recall that Soludo had in 2015 scored the last administration a big fat F9 for destroying the economy.
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4) PMB has introduced more technology in the fight against corruption by launching today an e-procurement initiative application, a tool to reform public procurement. You know when they told us in the past that they were using technology to fight corruption, we said they were introducing technology but not really implementing them, and also that the physical side of the fight was left to die due to a lack of political will. Buhari has now changed all that by striking a fine balance between the use of technology and physical fight in the war against corruption. This e-procurement initiative will shorten the space and time in procurement processes, and bring transparency and easy access to information. It will first be introduced in 6 pilot ministries (health, education, agriculture, transport, water resources, and power), and it will help to save about N48.4 Billion in the 2016 budget. This application will also make the 2017 budget more transparent, accountable, and less contentious. If you add it to the Economic Emergency Bill, then the economy can begin to experience more efficiency in the way it is run.
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5) The federal government earned N677.8b in the second quarter of this year. The massive forex influx into the country recently has seen our foreign reserve grow to $26.51 Billion. If the foreign reserves continue to grow, then we may begin to see a significant drop in the price of dollar which would in turn drive down inflation rate.