Africa

Fifty-one local firms have filed for bankruptcy, according to a public notice released by the Rwanda Development Board in October, Taarifa reported. Majority of these companies are from Gasabo, Kicukiro, Nyarugenge and Musanze districts. As per the notice, any person or institution can deliver a notice of objection to the Registrar General at RDB to halt the closure in a period of 20 days.

Tongaat Hulett Ltd., the 130-year-old South African sugar maker, is being placed in administration after failing to recover from an accounting scandal that exposed a mountain of debt, Bloomberg News reported. The decision was taken after creditors rejected a restructuring plan that would have given the company leeway on some of its outstanding loans and access to 1.5 billion rand ($84 million) needed to keep operations going. Tongaat had repaid about half of the 12 billion rand of debt that emanated from the scandal that erupted in 2019.

Zambian Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane urged other African nations considering using the Group of 20’s Common Framework mechanism to restructure unaffordable debt to act quickly, Bloomberg News reported. Africa’s first pandemic-era sovereign defaulter has been using the template to rework external liabilities totaling $12.8 billion. In recent weeks, Nigeria and Ghana have announced they’re considering revamping their liabilities. Rising interest rates and a surging dollar may push more nations into default as they struggle to pay for imports from fuel to food.

Ghana's finance ministry has formed a five-member committee with the Bank of Ghana to lead discussions with the financial services industry concerning an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, it said in a statement on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The goal of the committee is to "ensure orderliness and confidence in the government's ongoing negotiations with the IMF," the statement said. A similar engagement will be undertaken with external bondholders, it added.

The South African branch of McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm, was charged in a corruption scandal involving work the company completed advising the country’s state-owned freight rail and port operator. It may be the first time in McKinsey’s 96-year history that the firm has faced criminal charges, the New York Times reported.

The International Monetary Fund confirmed on Sunday that a staff team will visit Ghana this week to continue discussions with the authorities on policies and reforms that could be supported by an IMF lending arrangement, Reuters reported. Ghana turned to the IMF for help in July as its balance-of-payments deteriorated and hundreds took to the streets to protest against economic hardship. An IMF staff team briefly visited the country two weeks later. Reuters' reported last week that an IMF team would visit Ghana this week.

South Africa's central bank delivered another big interest rate hike on Thursday, taking its main lending rate back near pre-COVID levels as it battles to bring inflation back to target, Reuters reported. The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) raised its repurchase rate by 75 basis points (bps) to 6.25%. The rand pared gains against the U.S. dollar after the decision was announced, as some traders had positioned for a larger hike. The SARB has now raised rates for the sixth time in a row, adding a total of 275 bps to the repo rate since its latest tightening cycle began in November 2021.

Zambia's international bondholders have criticised the International Monetary Fund's debt restructuring framework as "arbitrary" and for excluding the country's domestic debt, sources involved in the process have told Reuters. Zambia has been in default for almost two years and an IMF Debt Sustainability Analysis published last week called for its debt-service-to-exports ratio to be cut to a 140% "threshold" from 153% quickly and to 84% by 2027.

Zambia has requested $8.4 billion in debt relief from its foreign creditors over the next three years, including from China, the country’s single largest creditor and the largest lender to the developing world, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Zambia’s debt restructuring is widely seen as a test of how much debt relief China will be willing to provide to countries that can’t repay what they have borrowed from Beijing, which has shown a reluctance in recent years to write down its bilateral debts, preferring to lend more or reprofile them rather than accept haircuts.