The Editorial Team |

London’s Pubs May Be Ordered to Close But City Will Stay Open

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Boris Johnson’s government is considering tougher action to fight the spread of the coronavirus in London but has denied it is planning to confine residents to their homes or seal off the city. “There are no plans to close down the transport network in London and there’s zero prospect of any restrictions being placed on people traveling in or out of London,” Johnson’s spokesman James Slack told reporters. It is “not…

StanChart Kenya Sees Prolonged Viral Pandemic as ‘Very Damaging’

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NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – The coronavirus outbreak will hurt Kenyan business revenues if it lasts longer than 90 days as employees stay away from work and companies halt operations, according to Standard Chartered Bank Kenya Ltd. “We are starting to engage with clients to see what is the impact,” Chief Executive Officer Kariuki Ngari said. “We believe it will get worse before it gets better. We are hopeful like everybody else that it will not…

Ivory Coast Finance Chief Sees GDP Growth at Nine-Year Low

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ABIDJAN (Capital Markets in Africa) — Ivory Coast’s economy will probably expand at the slowest pace since the end of a crisis in 2011 as the outbreak of coronavirus is seen to hit foreign direct investment and the roll-out of infrastructure. The world’s top cocoa producer cut its 2020 economic growth forecast to 5.8%, from an initial estimate of 7.3%, Minister of Economy and Finance Adama Coulibaly said in an interview. The loss of income…

African Body Begins Continent-Wide Effort to Combat Virus

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention deployed more than 100 experts across the continent and thousands of test kits to 43 countries to fight the spread of the coronavirus. “By next Monday, we will have rolled out 60,000 kits,” Africa CDC Director John Nkengasong told reporters Thursday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. The continent reported 16 deaths, in countries including Egypt and Algeria, from 640 cases…

The Emerging-Market Distressed-Debt Club Is Getting Very Crowded

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The bonds of emerging-market nations are entering distressed territory at an alarming rate as the soaring dollar raises the prospect of government defaults. Fifteen nations now have dollar-bond spreads of at least 1,000 basis points over U.S. Treasuries, a level many investors consider to be the threshold for debt to be classed as distressed. And that doesn’t even include Lebanon, which defaulted this month, and Argentina, which has begun restructuring talks with bondholders. At the…

Nigeria’s Refusal to Devalue Naira Seen Likely to Fail, Again

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Four years after Nigeria tried and failed to stop its currency from collapsing, Africa’s biggest crude producer is again reacting to this oil crisis the same way it did in the recent past. It worked out badly then as oil revenues, which account for 90% of foreign-exchange earnings, failed to rebound in time — leading to a depletion in the central bank’s firepower to defend the naira. It will…

The Only Question on South African Rate Cut Is ‘How Much?’

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – The debate around South African interest rates has now moved from whether the central bank will cut on Thursday to by how much. Of 21 economists in a Bloomberg survey, 11 predict a 50 basis-point reduction, while the balance expects the rate to be lowered by 25 basis points. Forward-rate agreements show traders have switched from pricing in a less than 50% chance of a 25 basis-point cut three…

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