Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has commenced the guided liquidation of NITEL and its mobile arm, Mtel, as it has started the evaluation of expression of interests (EOIs) from five prospective liquidators for the exercise.

Expectation on the possible cut in the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), anchor rate on which Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) lends to banks, are high as the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meets today in Abuja, BusinessDay interactions with analysts, have shown.

A surge in lending is likely to boost the earnings of Nigeria's banks this year though loans are eating into capital reserves and are too concentrated in the oil sector, credit rating agency Standard and Poor's (S&P) said on Friday.

The Federal Government policy to spur an accelerated production of cassava flour and especially turn Nigeria from dependence on wheat flour for bread has so far seen wheat imports decline from an all-time high of 4.051 million metric tons in 2010 to 3.7 million metric tons in 2012.

The minister of agriculture, Akinwunmi Adesina, who disclosed this yesterday, was optimistic that Nigeria’s dependence on imported wheat will decline even further as the government continues to implement the policy with the installation of industrial scale cassava production machinery and deploy hundreds of compact modular milling systems.

He was speaking at the national stakeholders’ forum on cassava bread which held in Abuja.

Nigeria is one of the largest importers of food in the world, spending annually about N635 billion importing wheat, wheat flour for use in bread, confectionaries and other foods.

The minister said this level of importation of wheat is economically not sustainable.

Data shows that in the 1960s, wheat accounted for a small share of the national food consumption. Total wheat import was only 78,000 metric tons in 1960.

This rose to 1.4 million metric tons in the 1980, 1.913 million metric tons in 2000 and to an all-time high of 4.051 million metric tons by 2010 and by 2011, Nigeria was already spending N635 billion on wheat imports.

The minister warned that this rising dependence on wheat poses several challenges for the nation’s economy as earned foreign exchange is spent on wheat imports.

He reiterated that it was because of these negative consequences that government, as part of the agricultural transformation agenda launched an aggressive strategy to substitute cassava flour for wheat flour in bread and confectioneries.

The government has also announced a number of fiscal policies to support this cassava substitution plan.

Adesina had announced that as part of the cassava policy, the government is facilitating the acquisition of compact modular milling systems that will allow the bakers mix their own cassava flour with wheat flour in the right ratios. The compact modular milling systems will be operated by some of the existing master bakers and other entrepreneurs.

The first set of the milling systems will be established in the country by the second quarter of the year, BusinessDay was told.

The Federal Government has said that the success of its transformation agenda depends on infrastructure development.

Lagos and Abuja have been listed among the top four cities in Africa with high cost of living, according to an index released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on 25 African cities.

UAC Property Development Company (UPDC) Plc, the property development subsidiary of UAC Nigeria (UACN), has veered into the retail segment of the property market.

There is excitement in the power sector as three major preferred bidders who are said to have stake in over 60 percent of the distribution segment of the market have made requisite payments to Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), preparatory to acquisition of the companies.