The U.S. business community is trying to figure out how to address President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which calls for higher corporate taxes to help pay for it.

Several prominent business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, oppose the proposed tax hikes. Behind the scenes, though, some companies are considering whether to put up much of a fight because of corporate America’s demand for an infrastructure overhaul,

Amazon.com Inc supports a hike in the U.S. corporate tax rate as part of an infrastructure overhaul, Jeff Bezos, chief executive of the largest U.S. retailer, said on Tuesday after facing withering criticism from the White House, Congress and on social media.

The largest online U.S. retailer, which has been widely criticized in recent years for paying little or no U.S. federal income tax, did not endorse raising rates to a specific figure.

The White House unveiled the plan Wednesday, and Biden discussed it in remarks in Pittsburgh later in the day. It calls for raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%. “No one should be able to complain about that,” Biden said during his remarks when discussing any possible concerns with raising the corporate tax rates.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari-administration has commenced the process that will pump the sectors with over n200 billion. as part of moves to spur the creative and technology sectors in the country.

A $500 million fund to be sourced from the AFDB, has the prospect of harnessing potential in Nigeria’s creative and technology industries.

Senior special assistant on media and publicity in the presidency, Laolu Akande, said it was public knowledge that the vice president, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, spoke publicly about the $500 million facility.

He added that details of how the facility would work were discussed at a meeting presided over by the VP, which had in attendance cabinet ministers, representatives of the African development bank (AFDB), among other stakeholders.

It was also gathered that the $500 million fund was in support of what has been named the Nigeria Innovation Programme (NIP) and being activated, especially with a report of the first draft project proposal presented by the AfDB and other stakeholders to the Vice President a few days ago.

Confirming the meeting, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity in the Presidency, Laolu Akande, said it was public knowledge that the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, spoke publicly about the $500 million facility.

He added that details of how the facility would work were discussed on Thursday at a meeting presided over by the VP, which had in attendance cabinet ministers, representatives of the African Development Bank (AfDB), among other stakeholders.

World oil prices have crashed as traffic resumed on the Suez canal this week after a massive container ship obstructing the waterway was let go,as the Taiwan-based evergreen marine container ship (panama) flagged MV ‘ever given’ trolled on the course way.

The Suez canal authority said that MV ever given was back afloat and was resuming traffic on one of the most essential routes for global trade and crude shipments that had been closed for nearly a week.

Crude prices had fallen earlier after the ship was partially freed, but when salvage experts said the hardest work was ahead, prices rebounded quickly afterwards.

Only hours later they managed to free the ship completely, and oil prices fell back while traders also shunned Thursday’s OPEC producers’ meeting.

Analysts say that it will take some time for container transport to resume to normal and that ”some leftover downstream ripple effects should be expected,” warned Rystad energy analyst Louise Dickson, saying “oil loadings, as well as some oil demand could be affected as manufacturers may have to close or pause production as they wait for delayed goods to arrive at plants.”

Image handout picture released by the Suez canal authority on march 25, 2021 shows Egyptian tug boats trying to free Taiwan-owned cargo MV ever given (evergreen), a 400-metre- (1,300-foot-)long and 59-metre wide vessel, lodged sideways and impeding all traffic across the waterway of egypt’s suez canal.

Carnival Corp may shift home ports of its cruise ships to other parts of the world if a ban on sailing from the United States is not lifted, Chief Executive Officer Arnold Donald said on Wednesday.

Cruise ships in the United States remain under a “no-sail order”, and Carnival has said recent guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on resuming voyages, including ensuring all passengers are vaccinated, are “largely unworkable”.

His comments came after the world’s largest cruise operator said booking volumes accelerated during the first quarter due to pent-up demand, sending its shares 3% higher.

Rivals Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd and Royal Caribbean Group have said they would restart sailing directly from the Caribbean later this year with vaccinated passengers. Most Caribbean cruises have generally set sail from Florida.

Carnival, which operates out of 14 ports in the United States, reported a first-quarter loss of nearly $2 billion, but said bookings during the period were about 90% higher than volumes during the fourth quarter of 2020.

Two of the Nigeria’s power distribution companies, Ikeja electric and Eko electricity distribution company, have attributed the drop in power supply in Lagos to a shortage in the allocation coming from the national grid.

The discos took to social media,via twitter informing their customers that the reduction in power allocation resulted from load-shedding by the government-owned transmission company of Nigeria, TCN, the grid manager

Ikeja electric, in a tweet on Wednesday, said, “the outage you may be experiencing is due to ongoing load shedding from TCN, in a bid to maintain system balance. This has created a shortfall in the power allocation we receive from the national grid’’.

He further stated, “we hope that once the grid becomes more stable, power supply to affected areas within our network will be restored. We regret all inconveniences this may have caused you and will keep you updated on the situation.”

EKEDC said on monday that total allocation from the grid to Ajah, lekki and Alagbon transmission substations fell to 162 megawatts as against 300mw.

It said, “we regret to inform you of the ongoing load shedding from our TCN partners. We received: 42mw – as against 120mw at Ajah t/s; 70mw – as against 80mw at Lekki t/s; and 50mw as against 130mw at Alagbon t/s.

The latest data obtained from the Nigerian electricity system operator showed that the power plants on the national grid generated 4,293.1mw as of 6:00am on Wednesday, compared to 4,288.2mw on Tuesday.

The nation generates most of its electricity from gas-fired power plants, while output from hydropower plants makes up about 30 per cent of the total generation.

Ten plants did not generate any power on wednesday.these idle plants included five of those built under the national integrated power project, nipp namely Geregu ii, Sapele ii, Alaoji, Ihovbor, and Gbarain. The others were Sapele i, Ibom power, AES, ASCO and Egbin st6. The nation’s installed generation capacity is put at 12,954.40mw, available capacity at 7,652.60mw, transmission wheeling capacity at 7,300mw and the peak generation ever attained at 5,801.60mw.

The International Monetary Fund is now forecasting a stronger economic recovery this year and next.

The IMF has upgraded both its UK and global forecasts compared with what it projected in January.

But the British economy is still predicted to return to its pre-pandemic level of activity only in late 2022.

The agency also warns that recoveries are diverging dangerously within and between countries.

The new UK forecast is for growth of 5.3% this year and 5.1% in 2022. Both figures are upgrades, though the latter is only marginally higher than the January forecast.

The recovery follows last year’s pandemic driven contraction of 9.9% which was the deepest of any of the G7 major developed economies.

Earlier the global organization gave an Overall forecast for the Sub Sahara African region is projected to contract by –3.0 percent in 2020. The largest impact of the crisis on growth has been for tourism-dependent economies, while commodity-exporting countries  Looking ahead, regional growth is forecast at 3.1 percent in 2021. This is a smaller expansion than expected in much of the rest of the world, partly reflecting sub-Saharan Africa’s relatively limited policy space within which to sustain a fiscal expansion.