Africa

KCB is set to receive a Sh8.8 billion ($105 million) loan from the World Bank to support its regional mortgage business, Business Daily Africa reported. World Bank’s private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has indicated it is considering advancing the cash to finance KCB’s mortgage and small and medium enterprises business in Kenya, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. According to IFC, KCB Rwanda will get $5 million. The final details of the proposed credit line will be discussed at a board meeting slated for June 7.

A rift has emerged within government over an International Monetary Fund condition to freeze civil servants’ salaries for three years — pitting the Public Service Ministry against the Treasury, Business Daily Africa reported. The tussle, if unresolved, looks set to trigger labour unrest since the condition has also been opposed by the Kenya Civil Servants Union, which has taken the government to court for non-payment of salary increments agreed on in 2008. It may also lead to conflict within the grand coalition.

Sustained pressure on food and fuel prices lifted the inflation rate for the fifth straight month in March, bringing closer to reality the possibility of consumer price acceleration touching the double-digit mark before end of June, Business Daily Africa reported. The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said inflation climbed to 9.19 per cent in March — the highest since the new method of calculating price changes was introduced in November 2009 -- and 2.65 percentage points higher than February’s rate of 6.64 per cent.

The IMF told Zimbabwe to contain public-sector pay demands to avoid stoking inflation and reiterated it would not resume lending until Harare clears its arrears, a Finance Ministry official said Thursday, Times Live reported on a Reuters story. Public servants, who get an average of US$200 a month, are pressing for a doubling of their pay, putting pressure on authorities already spending 70% of revenue on remuneration. An IMF team in Harare for annual talks with the government has warned that pay demands could push Zimbabwe back into an inflation spiral. The team ends its mission next Friday.

A real estate pricing bubble has pushed the cost of homes to more than 140 times the annual incomes of most Kenyans, making it difficult for millions of families to realise their homeownership dreams, Business Daily Africa reported. Kenyans aspiring to own homes can only do so if they are ready to pay at the rate of 148 times their annual income making them the most disadvantaged lot on the continent when it comes to homeownership, according to a new study of Africa’s housing market.

Kenya’s Treasury has promised the International Monetary Fund a three-year public sector wage freeze, setting up government employees for a tough sail in an economy expected to come under increasing inflationary pressure, Business Daily Africa reported. The deal is part of the conditions for disbursement of the Sh40 billion that the IMF and bilateral donors have promised Kenya to help shield the economy from forex rate fluctuation.

Real estate developers are moving out of Nairobi to smaller towns, aiming to tap rising demand for residential houses that the high cost of land in the Kenyan capital has left unmet and adding a new dimension to property market growth, Business Daily Africa reported. Latest market data indicates that there has been a marked upsurge in construction of new housing units in Naivasha, Kisumu, Mombasa, and Nakuru – a trend that is expected to ease demand pressure on Nairobi and help tame price inflation.

Royal Media Services chairman SK Macharia has moved to forestall a looming bankruptcy by filing an application seeking to set aside a court ruling that ordered his vast estate be placed under receivership, Business Daily Africa reported. Through his lawyers Dr Gibson Kamau Kuria and Mr Paul Muite, Mr Macharia on Monday appeared before Mr Justice Muga Apondi and pleaded to be allowed to deposit Sh35 million as security pending the filing of an intended appeal.

Royal Media Services chairman SK Macharia risks being declared bankrupt for failure to pay a transporter Sh35 million, Business Daily Africa reported. Lady Justice Martha Koome on Friday issued orders that the businessman’s vast estate be placed under receivership and appointed a government official as the trustee of his assets and liabilities. The orders followed a successful bankruptcy petition filed by Livingstone Waithaka, the managing director of Ocean Freight Transporters Company Limited.

Felix Dornaus is holding onto Ivory Coast notes trading at 38 percent of face value even as the world’s biggest cocoa producer slides closer to default on $2.3 billion of debt, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported. “I expect them to miss the deadline and technically they will go into default, but at the end of the day they will pay the debt,” said Dornaus, who helps manage about 1.4 billion euros ($1.9 billion) in emerging-market debt at Erste Sparinvest KAG in Vienna. The payment owed is “really peanuts for them, the money is there,” he said.