The Board of Directors of Berger Paints Plc, has announced the appointment of Mrs. Pheobe Onyinye Obi, as the new Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

This disclosure is contained in a press release dated October 5, 2020, signed by the Company’s Secretary and Legal Adviser, Ayokunle Ayoko.

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The Management emphasized that the decision of the Board which led to the appointment of Mrs. Phoebe Onyinye Obi as the CFO, is in line with the Berger Paints plan to strategically position its operations for increased efficiency and enhanced value creation.

Mrs. Obi comes with almost fifteen years of extensive local and international experience in leading Strategic Planning, Budgeting, and Corporate Finance for high-growth organizations, as she has worked at Management level in organizations like KPMG, Lion Seal Industries Limited, and Nomiworld/Sochitel Telecommunications Limited based in the UK.

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Prior to her appointment with BPN, she worked with Messrs. KPMG Professional Services (KPMG), from 2009 to 2018, where she rose from Senior Associate to Management Level. At KPMG, she spearheaded projects in Consumer Markets, adding several companies to the existing client base. Additionally, she met and surpassed deadlines and requirements of multinational group reporting both under IFRS and local statutory reporting requirements.

However, after she left KPMG in 2018, she was engaged as Senior Accountant at Lion Seal Industries Limited, from January 2019 till March 2020, before joining the United Kingdom (U.K) based firm of Nomiworld/Sochitel Telecommunications Limited as Head – Compliance and Financial Controls in April 2020.

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She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from the Babcock University Remo, Ogun State and a Master’s Degree in Finance from the University of Lagos. She is a Member of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA) of the UK, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).

She has several certifications including Professional Training and Certificates in Supervisory skills, Intermediate/Advanced Microsoft Excel and Financial Modelling, KPMG Global Risk Management Training, United Nations E-Course on Climate Change, amongst others.

The Federal Government has stated that Rice Farms in Anambra State and other regions will be revitalized to boost rice production, create jobs and also improve the living standard of the people in the State and the region.

This was disclosed by the Minister of State, Agriculture and Rural Development, Hon. Mustapha Baba Shehuri, during the assessment of Federal Government Rice Farms/Mills in Omor and Umerum in Anambra State.

Given the importance of rice as a staple in Nigeria, the Minister stated that the Federal Government is taking steps to achieve self-sufficiency in rice production, and this is evident in the policies of the government in achieving food and nutrition security, import substitution and promotion of inclusive economic growth across all sectors of the economy.

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Government Policy Interventions in Agriculture and Rural Development has helped to develop the rice sector, and these interventions include the provision of farm inputs such as agrochemicals, organic fertilizers, knapsack sprayers, planting & harvesting equipment such as reapers, mini combine harvesters, threshers at a subsidized rate in order to increase productivity.

The Minister added that these policies have not only increased the quantity of rice produced annually but interventions through the provision of modern rice milling machines to small/medium scale processors, has also helped to improve the quality of Nigeria milled rice to international standard.

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However, Nigeria’s rice consumption still holds higher than production, but government interventions through myriads of policies have increased rice production from 4.8 million metric tons of milled rice in 2015 to over 6 million metric tons by 2019 with a huge reduction in the nation’s deficit.  Hon. Mustapha Baba Shehuri explained that production is expected to increase as the government continues to revitalize rice farmers.

Shehuri said that ”the Ministry has established 23 Paddy Aggregation Centers nationwide to aggregate and store paddy. The centres were given to members of the Paddy Dealers Association of Nigeria (PRIDAN) under the public-private partnership arrangement”.

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In like manners, there will be the dissemination of modern rice production and processing technologies, through capacity building of farmers and processors directly and also in conjunction with the international donor agencies such as Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), German International Cooperation (GIZ), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Competitive Africa Rice Initiative (CARI), AfricaRice.

He reiterated that the Ministry is currently responding to the challenges of food availability posed by the COVID-19 pandemic by supporting smallholder farmers nationwide with various inputs including certified seeds of improved varieties of food crops such as rice, maize, sorghum, wheat, orange-flesh sweet potato, groundnut cowpea, soybean, yam, as well as cash crops like cashew, cocoa, sesame, oil palm, gum Arabic. Others include herbicides, pesticides and agricultural machinery such as rice reapers, transplanters, power tillers motorized sprayers and processing equipment.

These interventions are expected to alleviate the effect of the pandemic on farmers and ensure that they keep producing food for the country.

Sunti Golden Sugar Estate (SGSE), owned by Flour Mills, has suffered some disruptions to its operations as floodwater breached the Sugar Estate. 

This information was gathered by Nairametrics from a notification sent to the Nigerian Stock Exchange and signed by the Company’s Secretary, Umolu Joseph A. O.  

The largest miller by market capitalization, explains that the floods were as a result of the long rainfalls recorded recently at the northern and central parts of the Niger basin, as the floods were triggered by severe downpours at the Sokoto Rima basin, and as a consequence, the Kainji and Jeba dams witnessed an upsurge in the lateral flow of water. 

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The Management stated that SGSE has suffered some disruptions to operations, as the resulting high inflows in the downstream Niger River caused a breach to the extensive and properly designed dyke systems at Sunti Golden Sugar Estates (SGSE). 

This development is expected to delay the expansion project, geared towards increasing the area under cultivation to 4,000 hectares by mid-2021. 

The Miller assures stakeholders, that there is no immediate threat to the earlier indicated earnings projections of FMN, as immediate safety protocols have been instituted to safeguard employees, property and equipment. Hence the breach is not foreseen to impact the overall performance of the Group. 

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The company informs investors and other key stakeholders that the actual state of damage to the current sugarcane crop at Sunti, can only truly be assessed once the floodwater subsides, and ensures that it will release further details in due course as the need arises. 

Shares of Flour Mills at the end of the trading session on Friday closed at N21.50, and this is 6.70% higher than the market opening price for the day, 8.59% higher than the market opening price for the week, and 14.36% higher than the market opening price for the month. While the YTD gains stood at 9.14%. 

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Flour Mills shares are currently trading in the overbought zones, going with the agreement of Technical Momentum  Indicators, like the William Percentage Range, the Relative Strength Index and its stochastic variant, as the shares of the company are driven by strong fundamentals. 

In like manners, the company shares currently trade at 21.15x earnings per share (EPS), and 0.57x book value per share (BVPS), with a Market capitalization of N81.628 billion.