Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the beleaguered South African state power utility, reduced its debt by almost a fifth after repaying matured loans and benefiting from a more favorable exchange rate, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said, Bloomberg News reported. Debt fell to 401 billion rand ($29 billion) at the end of March, from 484 billion rand a year earlier, Gordhan said in a webcast speech to lawmakers on Tuesday. The utility has yet to release its financial results for the year.
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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
- Swaziland
- Tanzania
- Uganda
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Offshore drilling rig contractor Maersk Drilling said on Thursday it saw some signs of market recovery as it reported that orders in the first quarter were at the highest level in more than three years, Reuters reported. The company, which had already on Wednesday lifted its 2021 earnings guidance, said it added $730 million in new contracts in the first quarter, including a $370 million contract awarded by Tullow off Ghana. That was the highest level of new contracts since the fourth quarter of 2017. Maersk Drilling's shares, which have risen 40% this year, rose 2% on Thursday.
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Sudan got assurances billions of dollars of external debt will be canceled after the clearing of its arrears with the International Monetary Fund, a boost for the impoverished African country emerging from decades of dictatorship, Bloomberg News reported. France, Germany and Norway were among countries signaling their readiness to forgo repayment at a Monday conference in Paris that showcased Sudan’s return to the international community.
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Sudan’s leaders are in Paris to drum up international investment as they try to slash the country’s $60 billion of debt, a vital step in turning around a ravaged economy, Bloomberg News reported. France is offering a $1.5 billion bridge loan that will help clear Sudan’s arrears with the International Monetary Fund, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told a business forum Monday. President Emmanuel Macron later in the day opened a conference to support Sudan attended by its Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and dozens of other Sudanese officials.
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Tullow Oil has raised $1.8bn via a bond offering to repay existing debt, ending a tense refinancing process the company had warned posed a “significant risk” of insolvency proceedings had it ended in failure, the Financial Times reported. The Africa-focused group, which has endured a difficult few years since it slashed its production outlook and parted ways with its former chief executive at the end of 2019, will use the proceeds to repay loans including bonds due this year as well as a lending facility linked to its oil reserves.
Sasol Ltd. agreed to sell a 30% stake in a natural gas pipeline running from Mozambique to South Africa for as much as 5.1 billion rand ($361 million) in order to pay down debt, Bloomberg News reported. The deal rounds out an accelerated asset-sale program that has helped Sasol reduce borrowings that ballooned amid cost overruns at a giant U.S. chemicals project and call off a proposed $2 billion share sale. The company started hunting for a buyer for its pipeline shares last year as it examined ways to bolster its finances amid mounting pressure from creditors.
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CDC Group, the U.K. government’s development investment arm, is taking a step to help bridge what it estimates is a funding gap of as much as $31 billion that Africa’s agriculture and food industry faces each year, Bloomberg News reported. The 73-year-old institution is channeling $100 million to small-holder African farmers through export and trading company ETG, and is seeking other partners to help it deploy more capital to the sector.
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Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. said the South African state utility is unable to agree to certain union demands over wage increases and declined to make an offer on basic salary until labor groups respond, Bloomberg News reported. The loss-making electricity provider “cannot afford” proposals such as an improvement in pay inequality, according to a May 4 letter reviewed by Bloomberg. A request by unions to raise worker housing allowance has “no justification” and the required funds aren’t available in any case, the company said.
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South Africa's struggling national airline South African Airways (SAA) on Friday exited a local form of bankruptcy protection called business rescue after roughly 17 months, Reuters reported. SAA was placed under administration in December 2019, and its long-standing financial woes worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. All operations were mothballed in September 2020. Its administrators said in a statement that they had filed a notice of "substantial implementation" of a business rescue plan with South Africa's Companies and Intellectual Property Commission.
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Zambia, which defaulted on payments to bondholders in November, is doubling down on debt with a high-stakes bet that nationalizing one of its biggest copper mines will help rescue its flailing economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Once seen as among the most investment-friendly countries in the region, the landlocked nation in south central Africa is the most extreme example of a wave of populist governments in mining-dependent countries that are struggling to pay the bills after borrowing for infrastructure in recent years.