12 million Nigerians were enrolled into the National Identity Database in the past 6 months.

President Muhammadu Buhari disclosed that the FG has enrolled 54 million Nigerians into the National Identity Database, citing that 12 million were enrolled in the past 6 months alone and that the final aim of the scheme is to secure Nigeria’s security infrastructure.

President Buhari disclosed this in a statement on Thursday evening.

The President added that both legal residents and Nigerians are expected to obtain the NIN as it would be beneficial to government agencies to utilise resources efficiently.

Meanwhile the Federal Government has announced a further extension of the ongoing National Identification Number (NIN) registration and linkage with Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) exercises to a new deadline of June 30, 2021.

Turkey’s central bank on Thursday held its main interest rate at 19 percent while hinting that it may be lowered in the months to come.

The bank removed a key reference from its monthly statement promising high rates to fight inflation “for an extended period”.

It said instead that “the current monetary policy stance will be maintained until the significant fall in (inflation expectations) is achieved”.

The Turkish lira remained unchanged at around 8.31 to the dollar after the announcement.

Turkey’s annual inflation rate has edged up to 17.1 percent and is expected to keep growing for some months to come.

But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan subscribes to the unorthodox belief that high interest rates cause high inflation instead of slowing it down.

He replaced a market-friendly central bank chief who raised rates sharply during his four-month term with party loyalist Sahap Kavcioglu in February.

Kavcioglu has since promised to keep the central bank’s policy rate above that of inflation — signalling that it may be hiked should the inflation rate reach 19 percent.

The central bank repeated that statement on Thursday.

“High levels of inflation expectations continue to pose risks to the pricing behaviour and inflation outlook,” it added.

The lira has lost more than a tenth of its value since Kavcioglu’s appointment due to what analysts view as a further erosion in investor trust of the bank’s independence from Erdogan.

“We suspect that the central bank will begin cutting rates to appease President Erdogan and take the one-week repo rate down to 14.00 percent by year-end,” said Jason Tuvey of Capital Economics.

“But we think this will be an environment in which the lira comes under pressure and inflation remains elevated, forcing policymakers to reverse course in 2022.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has commenced the rehabilitation of Port Harcourt refinery in Rivers state.

In March, the federal executive council (FEC) approved the sum of $1.5 billion for the rehabilitation exercise.

The repair, which will be executed by Tecnimont SPA, an Italian company, will be done in three phases of 18, 24 and 44 months.

On Thursday, Mele Kyari, NNPC group managing director, and officials of Tecnimont SPA attended a kick off meeting on the rehabilitation of Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC).

The meeting signified the take off of the rehabilitation project which will be funded through internally generated revenue (IGR), Afreximbank and budgetary provisions.

The PHRC operates two refineries; the old refinery with a capacity of 60,000 barrels per stream day (bpsd) and new refinery with an installed capacity of 150,000 bpsd.

The two refineries bring the Port Harcourt refinery’s combined crude processing capacity to 210,000bpsd.

A long-negotiated investment agreement between EU and China was more of an “intention” than a deal and it could be a long time before it became a reality, an EU commissioner said on Thursday.

“I will be very honest with you, this deal was not exactly a deal,” Thierry Breton, France’s representative to the EU executive told the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.

“At the end of the day… it was an intention… not more, not less,” said the former French finance minister, who is the EU’s industry commissioner.

“So I think that the time when the intention will transform into reality may be pretty long,” he added.

He also noted that the deal, sealed to the surprise of many during the last hours of Germany’s EU presidency in December, came during an “interim time in the US” between the Trump and Biden presidencies.

Breton spoke after the EU commission admitted that it was forced to suspend efforts to ratify the pact after a volley of tit-for-tat sanctions between Beijing and Brussels.

The dispute escalated suddenly in March when the EU imposed sanctions on four party and Xinjiang regional officials because of their actions against the Uyghur Muslim minority.

Beijing swiftly hit back with punitive measures on European politicians and academics, including key MEPs who would need to back the pact.

The EU commission handles trade policy for the bloc’s 27 member states and the pact with China was seven years in the making.

The Bank of England BoE on Thursday said “developments in global GDP growth have been a little stronger than anticipated, and the substantial new US fiscal stimulus package should provide significant additional support to the outlook”.

But it cautioned that “the outlook for the economy, and particularly the relative movement in demand and supply during the recovery from the pandemic, remains unusually uncertain”.

Alongside the BoE support, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has spent £352 billion in emergency measures since the outbreak of Covid-19.

A large part has gone on a jobs furlough scheme that has paid the bulk of private sector wages for millions of workers across the UK.

The BoE on Thursday said it expected unemployment to peak at around 5.5 percent this year, up from the current official level of 4.9 percent.

Annual inflation will meanwhile reach around 2.5 percent, above the central bank’s 2.0-percent target, before falling back down.

Investors are concerned that the reopening of economies and huge government stimulus programmes worldwide will hike inflation, risking higher interest rates down the line.

The Bank of England has created £450 billion ($626 billion, 522 billion Euros) under its quantitative easing stimulus programme since March last year, when Covid-19 prompted Britain’s first coronavirus lockdown.