President Muhammadu Buhari has weighed in on the issue of the redesigned naira notes, currently stoking chaos across the country as its scarcity scuttles economic activities.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), last year, introduced the policy, setting January 31 deadline for its full implementation. The general public is expected to return old naira notes in their possession to banks before the deadline.

However, the redesigned N200, N500 and N1,000 notes are not adequately available to replace the old notes, riling up calls for the deadline to be extended. But the CBN said the deadline stays, triggering criticism from all quarters, with allegation that the move was initiated to make life more miserable for Nigerians.

Deadline for the return of old series of 200, 500 and 1000 naira notes remains January 31 2023. pic.twitter.com/ngHiXeHfNk

— Central Bank of Nigeria (@cenbank) January 28, 2023

President Buhari, who had earlier defended the policy, saying that the central bank has his backing, said on Saturday that the move is targeted at people hoarding illicit funds and not the common man.

In a statement released by Garba Shehu, the presidential spokesman, on Saturday, Buhari said the policy will stabilize and strengthen the economy. The statement is in response to reports of long queues of people waiting for long hours to withdraw the new naira notes from the banks’ ATMs.

The scarcity of the new naira notes has amplified calls for the deadline to be extended. But Buhari, in the statement, indicated that the benefits of the redesigned naira notes, outweighs the current hardship it’s causing. He said the policy has become necessary to prevent counterfeits, corruption and terrorism financing.

The president promised not to abandon Nigerians affected by the implementation of the new policy. He said that government will ensure that citizens are unharmed in their businesses and no disruption is caused to the entire supply chain arising from the currency swap due to end shortly.

He pointed out that a number of initiatives by the CBN and all commercial banks are underway to speed up distribution of the new notes and do all that is necessary to forestall cash squeeze and chaos.

The CBN has deployed agents to rural places across the country, receiving deposits of the old naira notes and issuing the new notes to people. Commercial banks have announced that they will run weekend operation to ensure that customers meet the deadline.

However, these measures have significantly failed to address the issue of ‘sufficient circulation’ of the new naira note, which is what is required to end the chaos. Buhari did not say if there a plan to increase the supply of the new naira notes across the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari said Saturday that he is aware poor Nigerians are ‘facing hardship’ due to the currency change policy of the government. Statement below…

President Muhammadu Buhari Saturday assured that government will ensure that citizens are unharmed in their businesses and no disruption is caused to the entire supply chain arising from the currency swap due to end shortly.

Reacting to reports of long queues of people waiting for hours for their turn to deposit old notes and get new ones, triggering public anger and opposition’s criticism, President Buhari reiterated that the currency changes were aimed at people hoarding illicit funds and not the common man, and that it had become necessary to prevent counterfeits, corruption, and terrorist funding. This, he assured, will stabilize and strengthen the economy.

While taking note that the poorest section of society is facing hardship as they often keep hard cash at home for various expenses, President Buhari gave strong assurances that the government will not leave them to their own fate.

He reiterated that a number of initiatives by the Central Bank and all commercial banks are underway to speed up the distribution of the new notes and do all that is necessary to forestall cash squeeze and chaos.

Garba Shehu

Senior Special Assistant to the President

(Media & Publicity)

Editor’s Note on Deadline Extension: The government has approved a new deadline: February 10th, 2023. A seven-day grace period, beginning on February 10 to February 17, 2023, has also been approved to enable Nigerians to deposit their old notes at the CBN after the February deadline when the old currency would have lost its Legal Tender status. Buhari gave the approval after a meeting with  Godwin Emefiele. According to Mr. Emefiele, 75 percent of the N2.7 trillion held outside the banking system has been recovered. This is all fine provided it happens before the elections.

Intel took a massive hit on Friday following the evaporation of about $8 billion from the chipmaker’s market value, indicating 32% year-over-year revenue drop that has triggered fear of a slump in the personal computer market.

The company’s fourth-quarter earnings fell short of analysts’ expectations, deepening its troubles and paving way for its rivals to exert further dominance in the much contested market.

Intel reported a net loss of $664 million, compared to a profit of $4.62 billion in the same quarter last year. The company recorded a total of $63.1 billion 2022, a 20% decline Year-over-Year.

“Clearly the financials aren’t what we hoped for, but we’re also pleased with the execution process we made,” CEO Pat Gelsinger said during Thursday’s earnings call.

“Despite the economic and market headwinds, we continued to make good progress on our strategic transformation in Q4, including advancing our product roadmap and improving our operational structure and processes to drive efficiencies while delivering at the low-end of our guided range.”

Gelsinger, who was hired early 2021 to turn around Intel’s misfortune, now has to double efforts to put the once market leader on winning ways. He said that Intel would continue to overcome short-term issues while pursuing long-term goals in 2023.

Intel’s revenue plunge, which resulted from declines in its two main business segments in the fourth quarter, came as a shock to Wall Street.

“No words can portray or explain the historic collapse of Intel,” said Rosenblatt Securities’ Hans Mosesmann.

The worst of the company’s revenue drop came from its Client Computing Group (CCG), comprising its desktop and laptop CPUs, which fell 36% to $6.6 billion.

“Demand fell mostly in the consumer and education markets and customers reduced their inventories,” Intel said.

Computing quoted Gartner saying that the PC market shrank more sharply than in any previous quarter since it started monitoring the sector in the 1990s.

But other areas of Intel’s business also recorded significant losses. The $4.3 billion in sales in Intel’s Data Center and AI sector (DCAI), which includes server chips, memory, and field-programmable gate arrays, was down 33% due to increased competition and a shrinking market, per Computing.

Computing reported that Intel’s network and edge (NEX) business area, which includes networking solutions, also showed signs of weakening demand. Revenue for the division fell 1% YoY to $2.1 billion, marking a dramatic reversal from the double-digit growth the division had previously posted. Despite this, the division grew 11% during the fiscal year 2022, it said.

Intel is facing heated rivalry in the chip market led by AMD, which in the past months has recorded significant growth under the leadership of Lisa Su, its trailblazing CEO who has been snatching businesses from Intel. Another company squaring up to Intel is Nvidia, the graphics chipmaker that is now expanding into central processors, augmenting its market growth as Intel falters.

AMD has used contract chipmakers such as Taiwan-based TSMC to make chips that outpace Intel’s technology, putting AMD ahead in revenue growth.

“AMD’s Genoa and Bergamo (data center) chips have a strong price-performance advantage compared to Intel’s Sapphire Rapids processors, which should drive further AMD share gains,” said Matt Wegner, analyst at YipitData.

While Intel shares closed 6.4% lower, AMD and Nvidia ended the session up 0.3% and 2.8%, respectively.

But despite the losses, Intel remains dominant in the market. The company’s smaller groups, like Mobileye and Intel Foundry Services (IFS), grew 59% and 30%, respectively, during the fourth quarter.

Intel continues to dominate the markets for PC and server processor chips, with a market share of more than 70%, according to IDC.

The chipmaker’s ordeal was compounded by the decision of biggest customers, Apple and Amazon, to focus on creating their own chips.

Intel generated $7.7 billion in cash from operations in the fourth quarter and paid dividends of $1.5 billion. The company plans to cut $3 billion in costs this year. But analysts said the company should consider cutting its dividend as capital expenditure is estimated to be around $20 billion in 2023.

Intel said it is poised to tackle the shortfalls in 2023, in hope to stabilize and accelerate growth, returning Intel to its uncontested market dominant position.

“In the fourth quarter, we took steps to right-size the organization and rationalize our investments, prioritizing the areas where we can deliver the highest value for the long term,” David Zinsner, Intel CFO, noted.

“These actions underpin our cost-reduction targets of $3 billion in 2023, and set the stage to achieve $8 billion to $10 billion by the end of 2025,” he added.

Gelsinger has been expanding contract manufacturing, building new factories in the US and Europe, as part of efforts to revamp Intel.

But analysts doubt the measures taken by Gelsinger will lift the company out of its predicament in the short term. Reuters quoted analysts saying that the current situation puts Intel at a disadvantage, even when the data center market, which is expected in the second half of 2022, bottoms out, the company would have lost even more share by then.

“It is now clear why Intel needs to cut so much cost as the company’s original plans prove to be fantasy,” brokerage Bernstein said.

“The magnitude of the deterioration is stunning, and brings potential concern to the company’s cash position over time.”

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