The Editorial Team |

South African rand hits 13-yr low as market sees U.S. rate hike

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s rand fell to a new 13-year low to the dollar on Monday, after investors sold off emerging market currencies amid heightened expectations of an imminent interest rate hike in the United States. At 1508 GMT the rand was trading 0.21 percent softer at 12.0600 to the dollar after earlier stumbling 0.8 percent to 12.1330, its weakest level since early March 2002, according to Thomson Reuters data. The currency recouped some…

Nigeria: claiming the African M&A crown

Posted on by The Editorial Team

Nigeria is home to the world’s seventh-largest population (with 173 million inhabitants), which is expected to surpass Brazil’s by 2030. And with increasing disposable incomes and a GDP growth rate around the 6% mark for the last 10 years, it isn’t hard to understand why Jim O’Neill, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management International, included Nigeria as one of the new wave of emerging economies, alongside Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey — the MINTs —…

South Africa rating not expected to change in next 24 months -S&P

Posted on by The Editorial Team

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s credit rating is unlikely to change at another review in June or in the next 24 months, but an electricity crunch will shave 0.3 percent off this year’s economic growth, Standard & Poor’s said. In its macroeconomic outlook for Africa’s most advanced economy on Monday, S&P forecast growth of over 2 percent this year, which would accelerate in 2016 and beyond. But it warned that wage demands from the public…

Kenyan shilling weakens as traders meet dollar demands

Posted on by The Editorial Team

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya’s shilling weakened slightly on Monday, with banks coming into the market to buy dollars to meet anticipated demand and square their positions.At 0750 GMT, commercial banks quoted the shilling at 91.25/35 to the dollar, compared to Friday’s close of 91.15/25 per dollar.”Guys have come in to take advantage of the lower rates to meet some of their demands,” said Martin Runo, a senior trader at Chase Bank.”Once the shilling started strengthening,…

MTN to spend R30bn on infrastructure upgrades

Posted on by The Editorial Team

MTN will invest close to R30bn this year to grow its infrastructure in the 23 countries where it operates, in an effort to attract 17.5-million more customers. The bulk of the expenditure has been set aside for SA, where it has suffered declining revenue, and Nigeria. The board had authorised investment spending of R10bn on South African cellphone and fibre-optic networks, said CE Sifiso Dabengwa on Wednesday. That is nearly double the R5.7bn spent upgrading…

JSE delivered a strong performance in 2014

Posted on by The Editorial Team

The Johanneburg Stock Exchange (JSE) delivered a strong performance in 2014, making it more difficult for competitors to take on the local stock exchange, rated the 19th largest in the world. The JSE, as it stands, continues to be a profitable organisation, and in 2014 earnings per share rose 25% to 742.4c. Group earnings before interest and tax increased 22% to R704m. An ordinary dividend of 400c per share and a special dividend of 80c…

Managing Capital Flows: Lessons from Emerging Markets for Frontier Economies

Posted on by The Editorial Team

Capital flows, and their successful management, have long been a focus of the IMF’s work and policy advice. Indeed, when John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White—the principal architects of Bretton Woods—were discussing the IMF’s Articles of Agreement, they clashed on many points, but they were surprisingly in agreement when it came to cross-border capital flows. Both men took as their starting point that, as White said, “the desirability of encouraging the flow of productive…

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