Zambia’s proposed ban on charging foreign currency in local transactions — punishable with 10-year jail terms — might defeat its own purpose, according to the International Monetary Fund, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank of Africa’s second-biggest copper producer in June unveiled the plans to curb increasing dollarization in the economy that it said blunts its tools to fight inflation. Businesses have already pushed-back on proposed regulations calling them “punitive” and warning that they may actually fuel price growth.
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Resources Per Country
- Angola
- Benin
- Botswana
- Burkina Faso
- Cameroon
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Congo
- Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
- Cote d'Ivoire
- Djibouti
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Ethiopia
- Gabon
- Ghana
- Guinea
- Kenya
- Liberia
- Madagascar
- Mauritania
- Mauritius
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Rwanda
- Senegal
- Seychelles
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- South Africa
- Sudan
- Tanzania
- Uganda
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
South Africa’s central bank kept interest rates on hold in a split decision, with two of the six policymakers favoring a cut which could signal a shift toward easing as soon as September, Bloomberg News reported. The monetary policy committee left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a 15-year high of 8.25% for a seventh consecutive meeting, Governor Lesetja Kganyago said in a virtual press conference Thursday. He said the two MPC officials who favored a cut wanted to lower rates by 25 basis points while the other four wanted to keep rates on hold.
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The African Development Bank said Thursday it had approved a $1 billion loan to South Africa's state-owned rail and ports company, Transnet, the Associated Press reported. The 25-year loan was wholly guaranteed by the South African government and will help finance the first phase of a $8.1 billion investment plan for Transnet to improve the country's ailing rail and port infrastructure, the bank said.
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Nigeria’s annual inflation quickened for an 18th straight month, raising the prospect of another interest-rate increase when the central bank meets next week, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices rose 34.2% in June from 34% a month earlier, according to data published on the website of the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday. The median estimate of eight economists in a Bloomberg survey was 34%. The main drivers of the acceleration were higher rental, transport and grain costs.
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Zimbabwe’s banks support adopting the ZiG as the nation’s sole currency before the current target date of 2030, provided the economic stability which the bullion-backed unit has delivered is maintained, Bloomberg News reported. Bankers Association of Zimbabwe President Lawrence Nyazema said the availability of the ZiG — which stands for Zimbabwe Gold — will improve as the nation boosts its foreign currency and bullion holdings. “We committed to coming up with a roadmap which would lead us to having a mono-currency by 2030,” Nyazema said in an interview.
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Tanzania’s Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA) has disclosed finalising the liquidation of the defunct telecom provider Sasatel after it confirmed that the telco could neither continue operation nor settle its debts, TechPoint.africa reported. Hydrox Industrial Services Limited, an industrial service provider based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was also named.
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Governments owe an unprecedented $91 trillion, an amount almost equal to the size of the global economy and one that will ultimately exact a heavy toll on their populations, CNN reported. Debt burdens have grown so large — in part because of the cost of the pandemic — that they now pose a growing threat to living standards even in rich economies, including the U.S. Yet, in a year of elections around the world, politicians are largely ignoring the problem, unwilling to level with voters about the tax increases and spending cuts needed to tackle the deluge of borrowing.
Ghana reached an agreement in principle with private creditors to restructure about $13 billion of debt, a key milestone in the West African country’s efforts to overhaul its loans. The nation’s bonds rallied, Bloomberg News reported. Under terms of an accord announced on Monday, investors accepted nominal losses of 37% on their holdings, according to a statement issued by the advisers to an international creditor committee and the government..
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Ghana and its bondholders will restart talks next week to hash out a debt restructuring deal on $13 billion of international bonds, four sources told Reuters, on the heels of a deal finalised with official creditors earlier this week, Reuters reported. Ghana, a gold and cocoa producer, defaulted on most of its $30 billion in external debt in 2022, weighed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and rapid global interest rate hikes that boosted borrowing costs.
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Zambia has finally ended nearly four years of default on its dollar bonds, issuing two series of restructured notes that were the product of intense negotiations, Bloomberg News reported. The southern Africa nation became the first in Africa to renege on its obligations during the pandemic in November 2020, setting the stage for what would become a complex restructuring fraught with setbacks.
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