The house of representatives on Wednesday indicated its willingness to investigate the probable exclusion of river states from the list of states to benefit from the federal government’s borrowings.

The lower chamber is to probe the possible omission of the oil-rich state as a beneficiary of states earmarked for projects.

This is the sequel to a motion of urgent public importance by representative Solomon bob alleging that rivers is the only state out of the 36 states to be left out.

The lawmaker further alleged discrimination against rivers state which contributes enormously to the federation account.

The house has mandated its committee on aids and loans to liaise with the presidency to include rivers state in the loans if it is found to be the only state that has been excluded.

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The move by the house of reps is coming two days after the rivers state governor, nyesom wike described as an act of discrimination, the alleged refusal of the federal government to include rivers as one of the states that would benefit from projects, for which it was seeking fresh foreign loans to execute.

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The Senate on Wednesday passed the 2022-2024 medium-term expenditure and fiscal strategy paper, retaining all the assumptions and projections submitted to it by the president, Muhammadu, in July 2021.

The red chamber retained the exchange rate of n410.15 per dollar proposed by the executive and also approved the projected gross domestic product growth rate of 4.20 percent.

The Senate retained the projected inflation rate of 13 percent fiscal deficit estimate of n5.62 trillion.

President Buhari’s projected new borrowings of n4.89 trillion, including foreign and domestic borrowing, were also retained and approved.

The $3.5 billion international monetary fund loan at the rate of 0.01 percent to 0.02 percent proposed by the president was also approved to shore up the internal borrowing and to reduce external borrowing because of the exchange rate risks.

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The senate further retained the federal government’s 2022 revenue projection of n8.36 trillion; and expenditure of n13.98 trillion among others.

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National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says the all-commodity group import index grew marginally by 1.07 percent between April and June.
This, it disclosed on Wednesday in Abuja, in the “Commodity Price Indices and Terms of Trade for Quarter Two, 2021” published on its website.

According to the report, the growth was driven mainly by-products of the chemical and allied industries (1.40 percent), wood and articles of wood, wood charcoal and articles (1.37 percent), and paper-making material, paper and paperboard articles (1.23 percent).

The NBS also said that between April and May, the all-commodity group import price index grew marginally by 0.12 percent.
This, it said, was due to marginal increases in the index of products of the chemical and Allied industries (0.78 percent), wood and articles of wood, wood charcoal and articles (0.72 per cent), paper making material, paper and paperboard (0.44 percent).

The document said that the all-commodity group export index increased by 0.72 percent between April and June drove mainly by an increase in the prices of products of the chemical and allied industries (2.54 percent).
Others are plastic rubber and articles (0.85 percent) and mineral products (0.74 percent).

It, however, said that the index was negatively affected by live animals, animal products (-2.61 percent), vehicles, aircraft, and parts (-0.24 percent), and wood and articles of wood, wood charcoal, and articles (-0.23 percent).

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The NBS explained that Terms of Trade (TOT) represent the ratio between a country’s export prices and its import prices.

“The ratio is calculated by dividing the price of the exports by the price of the imports, usually in percentage terms.

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