NCAA directs foreign airlines to board travellers to Nigeria without evidence of payment of return covid-19 test

By Favour Nnabugwu
Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, has directed foreign airlines operating into the country to allow  passengers travelling to Nigeria without evidence of payment for day-7 Covid-19 PCR test
The granting of the temporary permit is due to the  current difficulties being experienced by travellers to Nigeria in trying to fill their  health and travel history into the Nigeria International Travel Portal, NITP.
The Director General, NCAA, Captain Musa Nuhu who granted  this permission in a letter to all foreign airlines dated 11th September, 2021.
said the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 has been notified of the challenges.
Captain Nuhu said :  “Such passengers will be required to make payment for the repeated day-7 COVID-19 test at their destination airport in Nigeria”.
” Holders of diplomatic passports and children aged ten years and below who are unable to complete the NITP are to be allowed to board the flight. Their health declaration and travel history will be captured by the Port Health Services at the destination airport.”
The NCAA DG also directed the airlines to bring this information to the knowledge of their passengers and ensure strict compliance with the above stated conditions.
He also revealed that the Ministers  of Health , Aviation, Information and Culture have been briefed on this development. He added that the Chairman, Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 and the Head, Technical Secretariat, Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 have also been briefed.
Recall that intending passengers to the country have recently expressed frustration and difficulty encountered while filling the second covid-19 test forms they are expected to take on the 7th day of their arrival in the country.
They have also complained of difficulty in generating payment code. This had led to their being denied boarding by the foreign airlines .
PFAs invest N66.86 bn in infrastrature

By admin

 

Pension Fund Administrators, PFAs have invested N66.86bn funds under the Contributory Pension Scheme in infrastructure.

The National Pension Commission in a report, titled ‘Unaudited report on pension funds industry portfolio for the period ended 31 July 2021: Approved existing schemes, closed pension fund administrators and RSA funds’.

It said total funds under the scheme stood at N12.78tn as of July 2021.

According to PenCom, the total Retirement Savings Accounts stood at 9.4 million as of June.

The commission had in its amended investment regulation highlighted the requirements for investing the funds in line with the provisions of Pension Reform Act, 2014.

It said the purpose of the regulation was to provide uniform rules and standards for the investment of pension fund assets.

According to the regulation, pension fund custodians must only take written instructions from licensed PFAs with respect to the PFAs’ investment and management of pension fund assets held in the custody of the PFCs on behalf of the contributors.

It said the PFCs, in discharging their contractual functions to PFAs, must not contract out the custody of pension fund assets to third parties except for allowable investments made outside Nigeria.

“The PFC shall obtain prior approval from the commission before engaging a global custodian for such allowable foreign investments,” it said.

According to the regulation, the PFAs, in discharging their contractual functions to contributors, must not contract out the investment/management of pension fund assets to third parties except for open/close-end/hybrid funds and specialist investment funds allowed by the regulation.

PenCom stated that the PFAs must maintain a multi-fund structure as provided in the regulation to govern the investment of pension fund assets of RSA funds.

It said, “In addition to the requirements of other guidelines issued by the commission on corporate governance, ethics and business practices, each PFA shall establish an investment strategy committee as well as a risk management committee, in compliance with section 78 of the Pension Reform Act, 2014.

The investment strategy committee, in addition to other functions specified in the Act, shall formulate internal investment strategies to enable compliance with this regulation, taking into cognisance the macro-economic environment as well as the investment objectives and risk profile of the respective PFA Funds.”

It also said the internal investment strategies must be approved by the PFA in a formal board meeting at least once every year or as frequently as changes occur in the macroeconomic environment that may affect pension fund assets.

Innovative partnerships needed for climate change disasters – Diong

By admin

 

The Director General of the African Risk Capacity Group, Mr. Ibrahima Cheikh Diong said the davastating crisis in Madagascar sounds a stark warning of the need to take urgent action for partnerships in Africa

“Drought may well be the next pandemic after COVID-19 and there’s no vaccine to cure it.” If the words of Mami Mizutori, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction don’t compel us to take immediate action, Africa will continue to bear the scars of barren wastelands caused by climate change-induced drought.

There are several examples where a collaborative approach is already working well. Diong cites ARC Group’s partnerships with organisations such as the Start Network and World Food Programme (WFP), and funders such as the German Development Bank, UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and African Development Bank which are working to provide that resilience for African countries.

Southern Africa, East Africa, the Horn of Africa and now Madagascar are just the start.

The short-term solution to building resilience requires a multi-faceted approach involving both private and public sectors, says Diong.

“Our affiliate, ARC Ltd, which recently received a BBB+ Insurer Financial Strength rating from Fitch, works with governments, NGOs and funders to provide customised parametric insurance. This empowers African governments and NGOs to respond swiftly to natural disasters on the continent, but there’s a lot of work that needs to go into building distribution networks to ensure that we can reach as many people as possible. We need to build a coalition of the private and public sector,” Diong adds.

While governments are key in dealing with resilience to climate change, it’s the ability of the private sector to take action that will make all the difference, he says.

“Partnerships should extend beyond governments. The private sector is an essential partner for leveraging funding and experience demonstrates that private-sector entities are capable of rapidly taking up opportunities when and if these make sense from a business angle.”

Emily Jones, as Climate and Disaster Risk Financing Advisor for WFP, highlights the challenges of convincing authorities to be more proactive than reactive when preventing human suffering and hardship when events like drought occur.

“Unfortunately, no one person or organisation can make the necessary shift alone. Change starts with building resilience and insurance plays a significant role in that, particularly in climate change,” says Jones.

Governments pay a premium every year and receive their agreed-upon pay-out if and when a predicted disaster occurs. “This money can then be used to help those people affected, with the remainder of the pay-out going towards covering other consequences that might not have been expected, such as conflict or a loss of progress in terms of important local development projects,” she says.

“Humanitarians are working on highlighting the need to predict crises and act before they manifest in an effort to avoid human suffering. After all, why wait if you don’t have to?”

Jones speaks about how most authorities in African countries perceive insurance as a gamble when it should rather be seen as a risk management tool. Unfortunately, many simply don’t have the necessary tools available to plan, which is where ARC comes in.

“It’s amazing that ARC Limited is offering this type of insurance. However, insurance is really only cost-effective for catastrophic events that happen infrequently – perhaps once every 10 years – and if the governments that they’re selling the insurance to don’t have other solutions, they’re going to be taking out insurance that’s less than optimal,” Jones explains.

“So, something that WFP, ARC, and the African Development Bank wants to work on in the coming years is a risk-layering approach. This would involve introducing other tools for coping with those medium-scale events so that we can optimise ARC and hopefully offer better products, as well as ensure improved buy-in, a greater understanding of the products’ importance, and a track record of success,” she adds.

Since ARC Limited was established in 2014, the company has paid out $65-million in drought-relief efforts to seven different countries.

“In particular, the collaboration between the African Development Bank and ARC shows how coming together makes a major difference. In 2020, the ARC drought-relief pay-outs to Zimbabwe, Madagascar and Côte d’Ivoire totalled $6-million,” says Diong.

Madagascar received a payment of over $2,1-million, which was allocated to food assistance for 15,000 households, nutritional support to 2,000 children and 1,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women, and water supplies to over 84,000 households.

Reaching the most vulnerable, however, is difficult, adds Malvern Chirume, Chief Underwriting Officer ARC Limited. “One of the big challenges is access to the final customer, bearing in mind that most of our beneficiaries of the programmes are small- to medium-scale farmers and therefore it’s not cost-effective to access them one at a time.”

With climate change, we can expect extreme weather events to hit harder and more frequently in coming years. In a 1.5 degree warmer world, there is no doubt that drought will be a more regular event.

The GAR Special Report on Drought 2021 launched earlier this year is a call to action: we must act now if we are to meet the goals of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and create a safer, more resilient, risk-proofed future for all.

“Drought is not something that hits us suddenly, nor something that we can quarantine our way out of. Drought manifests over months, years, sometimes decades, and the results are felt just as long. Drought exhibits and exacerbates the social and economic inequalities that are deep-rooted within our systems and hits the most vulnerable the hardest,” says Chirume.

“While we may not be able to prevent it, we can certainly be prepared to deal with its impact by building resilience and providing swift support to those who are left vulnerable.

European Commission rules Alitalia’s €900m loans illegal

By admin

The European Commission publicly announced its disapproval of two loans granted to Alitalia by the Italian government, stating that they were illegal under State aid rules.

The Commission states that the Italian government must now recover the €900m worth of loans from Alitalia, which is soon to cease operations.

In a lengthy statement issued by Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager, it was proclaimed that Italy’s loans to Alitalia were illegal under rules regarding State aid.

Why was Alitalia in need of State aid?
“Alitalia’s financial difficulties go back a long time. There have already been a number of attempts to restructure the airline…” Vestager states, adding that, since 2008 (after a group of private investors purchased a controlling stake), the company has made losses every year.

Alitalia’s losses continued to compile, leading to an urgent need for more funds in 2017. That same year, Etihad stated that it would no longer be investing in the airline.W

Withno one to turn to, the Italian government issued two loans with a total value of €900m and placed the airline in special bankruptcy proceedings.

Loans to Alitalia deemed illegal.

Spurred on by complaints by other airlines, the EU Commission opened a formal investigation the year after Italy issued the loans to Alitalia.

“With respect to the €900m loans, the in-depth investigation has shown that first, the loans amount to State aid for Alitalia, and second that they are illegal under State aid rules.” -Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission
Here are the key points which support the EU’s ruling on Italy’s loans:

When Italy granted these loans, it did not make a prior assessment on the likelihood of loan repayment.

EU evaluation of Alitalia’s 2017 situation found that repayment “was very unlikely,” it adds that the loans even remain unpaid to this day.

Since no private lender would have granted the loans to Alitalia at the time, they amount to State aid in favor of the company.
There would have been an allowance for Italy to provide rescue funding to Alitalia, however.

This would have been the case if loans were repaid within six months and a restructuring or liquidation plan was developed. Unfortunately, none of these criteria for legal State aid were met.

The Commission has concluded that, as a result of Italy’s loans, Alitalia had “an unfair advantage over its competitors on national, European and world routes.”

It should be noted that another investigation is ongoing with regards to a similar loan granted from Italy to Alitalia at the end of 2019. Given Friday’s ruling, it seems quite likely that another proclamation of illegal State aid will be issued.

One rather interesting decision from Friday is that “Italy must now recover this amount from Alitalia.” With the airline soon to cease operations and revenue slowing down as a result, how will the hundreds of euros be recovered by the government?

Well, this will likely be made possible (at least in part) from the liquidation and sale of Alitalia assets, including any aircraft that it owns outright, as well as the sale of its loyalty program and brand ITA not liable to repay Alitalia’s illegal loans.

With Alitalia soon to cease operations, giving way to new airline ITA, the Commission has made it clear that the new carrier will not be ‘on the hook’ for repaying the loans. Vestager’s statement notes,

“Under our rules, a new company is not liable for past aid received by the seller, if the two companies are sufficiently different from one another. In other words, if there is a clear break between them, so-called ‘economic discontinuity’.”

WAICA Re awards winners of competition, Nwankwo, Inyang, Umeobi $100,000/$5,000, $3,000, $2,000

By Favour Nnabugwu

 

 

The West African Insurance Companies Association Reinsurance Corporation (WAICA Re) has awarded Mr. Ejike Nwankwo with $100,000 for winning the 2021 competition on how to manage plastic waste to prevent flooding

Apart fom the $1000,000 to help him with his iniative, Ejike Nwankwo also went home with $5,000 as an ambassador for 2021/2022 a the just concluded 47th African Insurance Organization (AIO) Conference held in Lagos.

WAICA Re also aearded Mr. Uduakobong Inyang with $3000 as first runners-up while Ms Chinwe Anthonia Umeobi of African Alliance Insurance Plc went with $2,000 as the 2nd runners-up.

Speaking the awards, the Chief Operating Officer of  WAICA Re, Dr. Abiba Zakariah stated that the corporation came up with this initiative as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) to end drought, flood and deforestation across Africa, especially, West African region.

Zakariah stated that the projects proffered practical solutions that can be replicated across Africa, saying, WAICA Re is ready to continue to support such initiative with $100,000 annually.

This is to ensure that Africans see themselves as solutions to African problems, she said.

She disclosed that the winner of the competition now becomes WAICA Re’s goodwill ambassador for a year, even as the reinsurance firm would support. the winning project with $100,000, while such ambassador will have a cash reward of $5000 and $2000 respectively, she stressed.

The former Secretary General of AIO, Prisca Soares noted that the devastating effects of natural disasters, which might also be linked to climate change in most countries on the continent is better imagined, adding that, the untold and undocumented hardship on the communities and worsening poverty situations, are gaps insurance policies do not cover.

According Soares, “So, beyond insurance policies, we must find practical solutions to some of these natural disasters as responsible citizens and corporate organizations. We may not have the power to stop natural disasters. Still, we can pull resources to alleviate their impact and reduce their frequency when we remove the human contributory factors,” she pointed out.

She applauded WAICA Re for spearheading such an initiative in West Africa by focusing its attention on finding practical solutions to natural disasters in the region.

She noted that, WAICA Re’s maiden edition of the CSR Competition and Ambassador for 2021 has been able to push discussions on the Environment to the forefront of burning issues.

Established in 2011 with the philosophy of strengthening the financial sector of the sub-region by providing greater and viable insurance and reinsurance capacity, the Corporation said the theme of its CSR competition is “Practical Solutions to Natural Disasters in West Africa.”

WAICA Re has made giant strides because of the inestimable supports it is getting from the reinsurance market across Africa, Middle East and Asia.