Swiss National Bank will cut interest rate to minus 0.25%

Switzerland's National Bank (SNB) will bring in a negative interest rate cutting the value of large sums of money left on deposit in the country.

The Bank is imposing a rate of minus 0.25% on "sight deposits" - a form of instant access account - of more than 10m Swiss francs ($9.77m).

It is trying to lower the value of the Swiss franc, which has risen recently.

Russia's market meltdown and a dramatic plunge in the oil price have led investors to

Putin insists rouble will stabilise amid Russian economic crisis

President Vladimir Putin has insisted Russia's under-fire currency, the rouble, will stabilise, but warned the economic crisis could last two years.

He is currently holding his annual end-of-year news conference.

Mr Putin blamed "outside factors" for the falling rouble but admitted the central bank could have acted sooner.

He also accepted Russia had failed to diversify its economy, which has been hit by falling oil prices and sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

''Goods have clearly been flying off the

Manufacturing’s robust performance in 2014 justifies call for industry-specific incentives

A leap in manufacturing’s contribution to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), huge investments in cement, sugar and automotive industries, as well as a surge in capacity utilisation within the year are indications that the sector can perform better in 2015 if the Federal Government pays more attention to broad-based, industry- specific incentives, rather than the individual-type motivations, stakeholders say.

“Majority of the members interviewed are of the opinion that once the government continues with broad-based incentives, the possibility of capacity utilisation improving further is high,” says the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), in its most recent economic review.

“What this translates to in the economic-wide aggregate, is

Luxury tax to fetch N10.56bn as FG unfolds 2015 budget

The Nigerian government, in 2015 hopes to raise N10.56 billion additional revenue from levies on luxury items – one of the strategies it is adopting to shore up revenue to manage the economy in the light of present shocks coming from falling oil prices.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, co-ordinating minister for the economy and minister of finance, announced that beginning next year, a 10 percent import surcharge would be imposed on new private jets and that this is estimated to yield about N3.7 billion to the federation revenue.

The government has also slammed a

Unsolicited Text Messengers Defy NCC's Warnings

Telecommunication subscribers are beginning to feel embarrassed with the avalanche of unsolicited calls and text messages that hit their mobile phones on a daily basis, in spite of warnings from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the industry regulator, to stop the action.

The subscribers have therefore called on  NCC to make further efforts in addressing the situation, which they  have said, constitutes  distractions and overloading of their phone memory, where text messages are stored.

Although telecoms operators have

Fraud: AfDB imposes 3-yr ban, $18m fine on Chinese firm

Africa Development Bank (AfDB) has imposed a three year debarment on China First Highway Engineering Co. Ltd. following its admission of fraudulent and collusive practices in an AfDB-financed project. The bank also levied a financial penalty of $18.86 million on the company to support anti-corruption projects on the continent.

A statement issued by the Bank Group said, “Ensuing from investigations conducted by the AfDB’s Integrity and Anti-Corruption Department (IACD), CFHEC admitted to

‘Nigeria Still Far from Meeting Domain Name Registration Target’

The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA), the body in charge of the registration of Nigeria's country code Top Level Domain name (ccTLD), otherwise known as '.ng domain name', has said Nigeria is still far from meeting  the  set target of registering 250, 000 domain names in the country.

President of NIRA, Mrs. Mary Uduma, who gave the information in a telephone interview with THISDAY Newspapers, said NIRA had in 2013, set a target to register up to 250,000 .ng domain names, but was unable to meet the target at the end of 2013. This  compelled  NIRA to