The Nation Newspaper

Tag: firms

  • Sack fever grips workers in meter manufacturing firms

    Fear of job loss is rife among local meter manufacturing companies  following their inability to produce at optimal level, The Nation has learnt.

    It was gathered that the firms, which have been sidelined by the power distribution companies (DisCos) in procurement of the locally manufactured meters, are said to have commenced pruning of their workforce.

    It was further gathered that many of the firms have sacked hundreds of workers, due to what they described as the ‘low patronage’  recorded in the history of manufacturing of meters in the country.

    While many of the workers were asked to leave pending when the companies’ production and sales pick up, others were directed by their managements to work part-time.

    The Chief Executive Officer, MOMAS Nigeria Limited, a local meter manufacturing firm, Kola Abalogun, said many of the firms in the  electricity sector are in dire strait, due to problems such as poor funding, low patronage  and the government’s refusal to come to their aid through an effective policy that will induce demand of their products.

    Balogun lamented that the meter manufacturing firms are hard hit because they are  being negleted by the DisCos.

    He said many of the DisCos are not buying meters from the local manufacturers, despite the fact that they produce meters that can compete favorably with the ones imported from abroad.

    He said:  “For MOMAS, we have downsised. We have sacked some of our workers because there is no way we can continue to pay their salaries when a lot of meters are stocked in the store waiting endlessly for buyers.

    “We have told them that many of the workers would be recalled or more employed in the event that activity picks up again in the sub-sector. This is the situation on ground. I cannot speak for other manufacturers. But I believe that we are all having one challenge or the other. The major one is that many of the DisCos are not buying meters from us.”

    He said only one DisCo, or two buy meters from MOMAS, saying the issue of power supply remains a challenge as the firms cannot continue to run on generators and survive.

  • Firms partner to encourage foreign educational trips

    Firms partner to encourage foreign educational trips

    Thanks to a new collaboration between Ibex, Julius and Julius Associates and the University of Lincoln with the University of Lagos (UNILAG), students of Unilag’s Building department, now have the chance to attend the University of Lincoln’s sixth international summer school in United Kingdom.

    Representative of Julius and Julius, Titus Ayodele informed the students of the summer school, organized by the architectural department of University of Lincoln as well as an organization called Ibex.

    He said: “Students who have been attending are students from Europe, America and other parts of the world, and as a result of that we thought that even though a few Nigerians attend the program, we would love to have more Nigerians in international events, that was what birthed our coming to Unilag. It is the first time Julius and Julius and Ibex will come to Nigeria to do this. My organization has been appointed to do this with Nigeria and other African countries, but we are starting in Nigeria.”

    Mr Ayodele said the purpose  was to get young Building students from Nigerian universities to be able to interact, network and meet with their counterparts from other universities in the UK,  where the  event takes place.

    With the organization’s budget of 50 students, each student will have rooms suited to them among other reliefs.

    Unilag lecturer, Architect David Adio-Moses, commended the initiative and encouraged other varsities to key into this and other projects of the organization, including two weeks summer training program, six months industrial training and masters abroad.

    He said the whole idea is to have collaborative research and to go for trainings that will expose students into innovation and innovative ideas, like green architecture, green energy and modern building construction method.

    “To make it sustainable, after they have been exposed, we will now have research teams where the students can do research work with lecturers so those teams will focus on problems facing Nigeria, like affordable housing, urban renewal, environmental degradation, pollution, green architecture and sustainable energy and all issues affecting Nigeria. So we are not just preparing or educating them, we are enlightening them, and at the end of the day, whatever ideas they have, they can translate into practical solution, through innovation and strategy,” Mr Adio-Moses said.

  • Seed firms accused of neglecting women farmers

    Global seed companies are failing to meet the specific needs of women farmers and provide them with the seeds they need, according to a study.

    The Access to Seeds index report 2016 found that seed firms focus their research on major cash crops, such as maize and rice without developing better varieties of other seeds that are important to female farmers in developing countries, the report says.

    This means that female farmers benefit less from advances in seed breeding and agricultural science than male farmers, the report’s authors warn.

    The report found that only three of the 17 global seed companies it studied have programmes that explicitly seek to take into account “women farmers’ input”.

    Women look for specific characteristics in their seeds and plants that men might be less aware of, says Coosje Hoogendoorn, head of research at the Access to Seeds Foundation, which aims to bridge the gap between major seed firms and smallholder farmers, and which wrote the report.

    For example, women prefer vegetables that can be cooked fast and grains that take less time to pound into flour, Hoogendoorn says.

    “This might be something that men will not be thinking about so much,” she says. But if seeds are easier to grind, it frees up time for women to do other things. “If women have more time for their farm, it helps them move out of poverty and become entrepreneurs,” she says.

    Regional seed companies are better at including smallholder farmers in research than their global counterparts, and could help close the seed gap for women, the report says.

    While global companies focus on breeding and developing new seed varieties, regional companies interact with small-scale farmers and local markets, feeding client preferences back to their global partners, the report says.

    Therefore, local firms could help global companies understand what female farmers need, says Ian Barker, the head of agricultural partnerships at the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture. Seed varieties that neatly match women’s needs already exist, but global companies are marketing these poorly because they lack awareness of women’s requirements, he says.

    “That could be one of the big values of this index: it shines a light on these areas that need attention,” he says.

  • NECA advises firms to negotiate with banks over charges

    NECA advises firms to negotiate with banks over charges

    The Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) has advised firms to negotiate current account maintenance fees with their  banks.

    NECA expressed concern about the likelihood of some organised businesses losing revenue to commercial banks through what it called “unnegotiated” current account maintenance fee, in contravention of the directive of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on maintenance fee.

    According to NECA, the CBN had released a Revised Guide to Bank Charges on March 27, 2013 in which it expressed resolve to gradually phase out Commission on Turnover (COT) until it achieves a zero charge this year.

    However, NECA explained that in a sudden twist to the policy thrust, the CBN granted a negotiable current account maintenance fee not exceeding N1 to the banks on January 29, this year

    Speaking in Lagos, the NECA Director-General, Mr. Olusegun Oshinowo said: “We have noted that many companies are yet to explore the window of negotiating the current account maintenance fee with their banks. The maximum rate of N1 is the ceiling and it is expected that clients would negotiate with their banks acceptable rates below the ceiling.”

    He urged companies to approach their banks and insist on negotiating the rate downward from one naira (N1), adding that, “this is in line with the guideline of the CBN.”

  • Prioritise forex allocation to auto firms, council urges CBN

    Prioritise forex allocation to auto firms, council urges CBN

    The National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) has urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to prioritise foreign exchange (forex) allocation to the automobile industry.

    NADDC’s Director of Policy and Planning, Mr. Luqman Mamudu, who made the appeal in Lagos, said it would enable the local manufacturers to acquire critical components for production and to safeguard their investments.

    He said it was essential that forex allocation to the sector was prioritised since the essence of the automotive policy was to boost local capability and restrict importation of used vehicles. He said scarcity of forex is undermining the development of the industry.

    “At present, the local assemblies can produce 210, 000 vehicles per annum. We believe that with encouragement from government, it can improve. But most assemblies are facing challenges of sourcing for foreign exchange for critical input, which has led some to lay off staff. To sustain the auto industry, local assemblies need encouragement from the government to access foreign exchange for production,’’ he said.

    Mamudu stressed that the automotive industry was a critical sector capable of creating jobs and impacting on other sectors of the economy. He said the automotive industry was capable of driving the agricultural sector because farm tractors were produced by the automotive industry.

    “It also drives consumer goods like washing machines, motorcycles, boats used in the marine industry. The automotive technology is really versatile, that is why developed countries do not joke with the industry. We cannot keep importing vehicles. We must develop our capacity locally, so that we do not continue to rely on other countries,” Mamudu said.

  • ‘Local oil firms worst hit by price crash’

    The global oil price crash affected Nigerian independent oil companies most, the Managing Director of Seplat Petroleum Development Company Plc, Mr. Austin Avuru has said.

    Avuru spoke yesterday at the 13th Aret Adams Annual Lecture Series held in Lagos. Speaking on this year’s lecture themed: ‘Low Oil Prices: Challenges and Opportunities,’ he said  independent oil companies in the country were heavily impacted as they all borrowed to fund acquisitions and capital expenditure (capex) growth.

    He said many independents are now cash negative and yet need more investments for production increase in order to survive, adding that the average price of $60 per barrel was required for most companies to survive this year.

    “We need to embrace effective domestic utilisation of fossil fuels to survive, and because Nigeria is heavily dependent on oil to balance the economy, the drop in oil price was a huge blow to the country’s revenue,” Avuru said.

    The Managing Director, Chevron Nigeria Limited, Mr. Clay Neff said Nigeria had the opportunity to improve its competitive position in the global oil and gas industry.

    He noted that in this current situation, the country should restore investors confidence by providing competition in the oil market, adding that the security of lives and properties, and control stability and speedy approval processes should also be institutionalised.

    The Chevron chief said the country should address its Joint Venture (JV) funding challenges and pay the arrears, adding that Nigeria had an attractive resource base.

  • ‘IOCs, indigenous oil firms may cut more jobs’

    Local and International Oil Companies (IOCs) may sack more of their outsourced workers,  if the uncertainties in the global oil market continue, President, Association of Outsourcing Professionals of Nigeria (AOPN), Austin Nweze has said.

    Nweze told The Nation that the global oil market climate compared to the Nigerian economy is not conducive. He said people were not ready to risk their resources and investments in Nigeria.

    According to him, operators in the upstream segment of oil and gas have lost many of their workers to market recession, adding that the sector would continue to downsize or right-size, going by the prevailing atmosphere in the industry.

    The sector, he said, has lost thousands of jobs across board, stressing that more workers are expected to join the labour market. “There is a general lull in activities in the industry. Aside the attendant loss of business in the upstream sector that led to sales of assets by Chevron, ConocoPhillips and other oil majors, the downstream sector is battling problems.  There are virtually no new exploration activities in the industry. This is affecting the capacity of the sector to perform optimally,” he said.

    Nweze said according to a research carried out by the association, multinational and local oil companies have lost much to crude oil theft, pipeline vandalism and other untoward practices, adding that they are not ready to incur more losses. The firms, according to him, are opposed to the idea of keeping certain workers as part of efforts at mitigating losses.

    Engineers, clerical workers and others, he said, will be mostly affected because they do not contribute much to their employers.

    He said: “From the research, oil and gas firms are ready to keep security and maintenance officers, who supervise and watch over their equipment. These are contract staff, which the oil companies outsourced. To oil and gas firms, their services are much needed in view of the unstable socio-economic environment in Nigeria.

    “It is expensive to maintain expatriate workers. Their salaries are in foreign currencies, and it would affect the operational costs of the companies if such workers are kept for long. Now, the industry’s problems have rendered them redundant.

    “Maintenance of security officials is important to the oil and gas servicing firms. The firms spend a lot of money in providing pipelines, building tanks, deploying exploration equipments to oil wells, and they would not be happy losing those things.  Though the Joint Task Force set up by the Federal Government to patrol and safeguard oil wells are trying their best, oil firms believe in providing their security to compliment whatever the government has done.”

    According to him, if contract staff such as securities and drivers, among others in the lower cadre lose their jobs, they would get new ones. Nweze said companies provide security and other contract staff for local and international oil companies, adding that their jobs are always needed in the industry. This category of workers collect small salaries, compared to the engineers, geologists, and other senior workers.

    The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) also alleged that the oil majors have sacked many workers in view of the problems in the industry.

  • Fed Govt urged to extend forex allocation to power firms

    For a stable power supply, the Federal Government should allocate foreign exchange to the power sector.

    This, according to the chairman, Egbin Power Plc, Mr. Kola Adesina,  will  help the sector’s players to perform better.

    He urged the Federal Government to allocate foreign exchange (forex) to power sector, as it does to their oil and gas counterparts, to enable them provide stable power.

    At a stakeholders’ forum in Lagos, he appealed to the government to help power firms recover some of their debts  to enable them improve their productivity.

    He said the allocation of forex and recovery of debts  were two major issues that should  be addressed to boost the industry.

    Adesina said access to foreign exchange by operators was critical to the growth of the sector. He said the failure of the government to provide the sector with incentives meant the growth of the sector would further be impeded.

    He said investors were operating in a harsh foreign exchange regime, in view of the significant drop in the value of naira, adding that this has negatively impacted on their operations.

    He said operators need foreign exchange to buy equipment from the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) abroad.

    He said: “One of the most critical issues bedeviling the operation of power firms is unfavorable foreign exchange mechanism. At the point of acquisition of the assets of Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in 2013, the exchange rate was N155 per dollar. Thereafter, the rate fell to N199 per dollar at the official market.

    “Invariably, there is the need for the government to allocate foreign exchange to both the operators of both the power generation companies (GenCos) and power distribution companies (DisCos) in the country; the same way it provides for operators in the oil and gas industry.”

    He said this would enable power firms to get the  energy mix right, as well as help the country to record industrial growth.

    Adesina said the management has started feasibility studies on how to double the capacity of Egbin power s plant. He said the company’s growth plans include increasing electricity generation, construction of industrial power park and investing in renewable energy in the Northern.

    According to him, the park would help in promoting the small, medium and large scale enterprises and further move the  economy forward.

    “We, at (Egbin), would definitely overcome some of our challenges. As soon as the coast gets clearer, we would invest more in the sector. We, at Sahara Group, Egbin and KEPCO, are committed to the vision of electrifying Nigeria,” he said.

    The sector had tried to reduce its debt burden, caused by failure of some customers to pay their bills. Also, the operators have been asking for concessions to import equipment into the country for increased production.

  • NCC prepares licences for five broadband firms

    NCC prepares licences for five broadband firms

    The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday in Lagos, said its preparations for the licensing of five new broadband infrastructure companies (Infracos) has reached an advanced stage, adding that before the end of the first quarter of this year, the licencees will emerge.

    Its Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Prof Umar Dambatta who spoke during his maiden press conference at Lagos Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Ikekja, said a committee to handle the award of the licences has already been constituted in the Commission.

    Prof Dambatta who unveiled what he termed his “Eight Point Agenda for 2015-2020” said the pillars will ride on a tripod of three ‘As” which represent availability of service; accessibility of service; and affordability of service in line with the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s change agenda, an ideological shift in the creation of structures for social benefits and inclusiveness for national development.

    He said ubiquitous broadband provision is very important. He said while two Infracos have already been licenced to provide services in Lagos and the Northeast, the remaining five other geopolitical zones will be captured in the next licensing round.

    He said though not much is going on in the deployment of services in the two licensed zones, the Commission has invited MainOne which won the Lagos licence for discussion while HIS which won the Northeast licence will be engaged in meaningful discussion to drive the implementation of the National Broadband Plan of the Federal Government, grow sector contribution to national gross domestic product (GDP), create jobs and enhance good life for the citizens of the country.

  • ‘Foreign exchange imbalance affecting power firms’

    The imbalance in the foreign exchange regime, occasioned by the falling rate of naira, is taking its toll on the operations of new power investors, the Chairman, Egbin Power Plc, Mr. Kola Adesina, has said.

    He said the power distribution companies (DisCos) are spending more money than before to buy equipment abroad, because  the naira is falling at abysmal rate.

    While speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos, Adesina said the problem facing the naira has made it difficult for power firms  to survive, since they depend on Original Equipment Manufacturers(OEMs) in their   production.

    He said: “When we bought Egbin Power Company when the sector was privatised in 2013, naira was sold for N159 per dollar. At a point, the value of naira reduced further as it was sold for N179 to a dollar, and later N196 to a dollar at the official window. The situation was worse at the black market where dollar is sold for N220 and above. This is not without its attendant consequence on operators in the sector.’’

    According to him, spare parts used in the industry can only be procured in dollars, stressing that the development is having far-reaching effects on the performance of the operators.

    Adesina said despite the fiscal problem, among others, facing the sector, and the economy, Egbin Power has weathered the storm to record some successes.

    He said the achievements included increased megawatts (Mw) of electricity, thereby making the turbines functional, among others.

    Adesina said the recent one was the dedication of 220 megawatts of electricity to Lagos, by Egbin. He said this would not have been possible without the support of the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

    “When we choose to dedicate the 220 megawatts to Lagos, the Vice President, Osinbajo stood by us,” he added.