Africa

Nigeria's Union Bank has sufficient cover for its 3.9 billion naira ($10.69 million) loan to telecoms group 9mobile and will focus on expanding lending to agricultural and real estate businesses, its chief executive, Emeka Emuwa, said on Monday. Lenders have agreed to extend a $1.2 billion loan which mobile operator 9mobile, formerly known as Etisalat Nigeria, took out four years ago but struggled to repay due to a currency crisis and a recession in Nigeria, Reuters reported.

South Africa’s National Treasury confirmed the appointment of Vodacom Group Ltd. executive Vuyani Jarana as the first permanent chief executive officer of the state-owned carrier since November 2015. Jarana will take the helm at South African Airways when Vodacom releases him of his duties, the Treasury said in an emailed statement on Thursday. The debt-laden airline has failed to make a profit since 2011 and was handed a bailout last month after National Treasury transferred funds to help it avoid a default on its debt to Standard Chartered Plc, Bloomberg News reported.

The Republic of Congo became the second African country this year to miss a Eurobond payment after a contractor alleging the government owes it money blocked the transfer of funds to debt investors, Bloomberg News reported. Holders of the Central African nation’s $363 million of securities due in 2029 did not receive around $21 million in coupons and amortization payments by the end of July, when the grace period expired, according to Lutz Roehmeyer, a money manager at Landesbank Berlin Investment.

South Africa is evaluating assets it could sell to pay for this month’s 2.2 billion rand ($169.5 million) bailout of unprofitable carrier South African Airways, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba said in letter to parliament, Bloomberg News reported. The government’s decision to settle a debt owed by the airline to Standard Chartered Plc mustn’t affect the balance of this year’s budget, Gigaba said in the note to Baleka Mbete, speaker of the National Assembly. Further details will be provided in October, he said.

South Africa will extend more support to the beleaguered state-owned power utility and is considering selling assets as part of a 14-point plan to revive an economy that’s in its second recession in almost a decade, Bloomberg News reported. The country will approach the energy regulator this month about the “hardship” Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. is dealing with, and will develop a case for “soft support” of the electricity producer until its new tariffs are finalized next year, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba told reporters in Johannesburg Thursday.

Nigeria's central bank and its telecoms industry regulator have intervened to save the country's fourth largest telecoms firm from collapse after talks with local banks to renegotiate a $1.2 billion loan failed, a regulatory source said on Tuesday. Etisalat Nigeria is the biggest foreign-owned victim of dollar shortages plaguing the country due to lower oil prices and economic recession, leaving the company struggling to make repayments to lenders and suppliers, Reuters reported.

Chad is seeking to delay repayment of more than $1 billion of Glencore Plc-led oil-for-cash loans after crude prices plunged, the second time the African country has looked to restructure the debt in two years, according to people familiar with the matter. Glencore has approached the banks that supported the deal to start talks, while Chad has already appointed financial and legal advisers for the discussions, the people said, asking not to be named because the matter is private, Bloomberg News reported.

The head of the three Mozambican state-owned companies at the center of an audit into their previously undisclosed debts was defiant after the probe criticized his leadership, Bloomberg News reported. Antonio do Rosario, in a letter seen by Bloomberg that he authenticated, said Kroll LLC auditors personally attacked him in the report that was published on June 24.

A group of key Mozambique bondholders laid down terms to the embattled government ahead of restructuring talks, calling on it to revoke guarantees on loans taken on by two state-owned companies, Bloomberg News reported. The southern African nation, which defaulted on its only Eurobond in January, should also liquidate the two firms -- ProIndicus and Mozambique Asset Management -- as well as a third, the tuna-fishing company known as Ematum, the so-called Global Group of Mozambique Bondholders said.

The International Monetary Fund had suspicions about Mozambique’s hidden loans almost a year before the government finally admitted it had undisclosed debt, email exchanges between the fund and the government show. The communications, seen by Bloomberg and confirmed by the IMF, show for the first time how the fund sought to uncover the state’s concealment of its borrowings as far back as May 2015, Bloomberg News reported. The government’s eventual disclosure in April 2016 of more than $1 billion of previously hidden loans led the fund and 14 donor countries to freeze aid last year.