Africa

Zambia’s cabinet approved plans to restructure the country’s loans from China after the International Monetary Fund said Africa’s second-biggest copper producer was at high risk of debt distress, Bloomberg News reported. The government will also source financing directly from Chinese lenders rather than through contractors in a bid to cut the cost of borrowing, the presidency said Tuesday in an emailed statement.

Recent market turmoil has not deterred relatively risky countries from their debt-raising plans. Kenya has appointed banks to raise 30-year debt — a plan that would make it one of just a handful of sub-Saharan African sovereigns to do so — along with a 10-year bond, the Financial Times reported. Meanwhile Egypt is in the market today with a three-tranche deal, offering five-, 10- and 30-year paper. Both deals will be denominated in dollars.

Mozambique’s state prosecutor on Monday launched legal proceedings against the managers of the state-owned companies at the heart of a multibillion dollar debt scandal, almost two years after the crisis rocked the southern African nation. The office of Mozambique’s attorney-general said in a statement on Monday that it had opened a case at the administrative tribunal to establish “financial responsibility” for the scandal, in which three companies controlled by the country’s intelligence service hid $2bn of state-backed loans, the Financial Times reported.

Steinhoff International Holdings NV said it has secured enough money to keep its businesses running in the immediate term and can now start talks with a broader group of creditors, Bloomberg News reported. The troubled South African retail group has arranged new credit lines for units in the U.K., U.S. and France as well as agreeing a restructuring of its Austrian division, it said in a presentation published on its website. The announcement came after a meeting with creditors in London on Friday to discuss progress stabilizing the business since it uncovered accounting irregularities on Dec.

Nigeria’s finance minister plans to drag tax defaulters who don’t make use of an amnesty to court as she seeks funds to plug the nation’s $25 billion infrastructure gap, Bloomberg News reported. In the nine months of reprieve ending March, some penitent taxpayers have said “you got me” and cleared arrears without paying interest and or penalties, Kemi Adeosun said in an interview on Tuesday in her office in the capital, Abuja. But some have said “we wish you luck with this, catch us if you can,” she said. Nigeria wants to double its tax to gross domestic product ratio by 2020.

Zimbabwe’s finance ministry is planning comprehensive reforms of all the nation’s state-owned companies, including liquidation, forming joint ventures and the outright sale of some businesses, Bloomberg News reported. The government will seek input through the ministries under which the respective state entities fall, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said in a statement handed to reporters in the capital, Harare, on Tuesday. Zimbabwe’s state-owned companies have long been a drain on the country’s finances, said Chinamasa.

South Africa appointed a new board at struggling utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., with Jabu Mabuza becoming chairman, and ordered a new permanent chief executive officer to be named within three months. As well as the appointment of Telkom SA SOC Ltd. Chairman Mabuza, the government recommended former Land Bank chief Phakamani Hadebe as the acting CEO, it said in a statement. The move, designed to strengthen governance and management, follows a meeting between President Jacob Zuma and other key ministers on Friday to address urgent challenges at the firm, Bloomberg News reported.

Retailer Steinhoff’s South African lenders have backed a move to prop up its troubled European operations with liquidity from healthier South African subsidiaries as the group scrambles to close a funding gap, Reuters reported. A first instalment of 60 million euros ($73 million) of a total 200 million it is seeking will be received this week, Steinhoff said in a statement on Thursday, adding it was seeking consent for further instalments.

There is a “clear danger” that South Africa’s state-owned power utility, Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., could default on its debt, S&P Global Ratings said. “We are very concerned about liquidity issues,” Konrad Reuss, the managing director of S&P for sub-Saharan Africa, said at an event in Johannesburg Thursday. Eskom is the biggest recipient of state guarantees at a time when domestic power demand is the lowest in more than 10 years and as South Africa’s finances buckle under lower tax revenue and rising debt, Bloomberg News reported.

The oil price has hit $70 a barrel, its highest level in more than three years, but that’s not proving much help for a country which generates 95 per cent of its foreign earnings from petrodollars. Angola, sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest economy, began 2018 by scrapping the peg its currency, the kwanza, has with the dollar and warning of a potential renegotiation of its $40bn in external debt, the Financial Times reported.