Banking | - Part 71

Kenyan Treasury Bats for Banks as Rate-Cap Battle Looms

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Kenyan lenders have strong allies in a bid to overturn interest-rate caps that have eaten into earnings. But support from the central bank and Treasury might not be enough to restore the stellar profits they once enjoyed. Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich surprised lawmakers last week by saying he plans to repeal legislation limiting borrowing costs, backing calls by central bank Governor Patrick Njoroge who has complained the rule complicates monetary policy by making credit demand hard…

Angola’s banking system is stable despite weak economic activity

Posted on by The Editorial Team

LUANDA (Capital Markets in Africa) – The International Monetary Fund indicated that Angola’s banking system is stable despite weak economic activity that has weighed on the banks’ capital metrics and asset quality in the previous three years. The sector’s risk-weighted capital adequacy ratio reached 18.9% at the end of 2017 relative to 19.2% at end-2016, but was well above the regulatory minimum of 10%. The IMF noted that Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA) introduced a new liquidity requirement that limits…

Namibia Holds Key Rate at 2016 Low as Prices Stay in Check

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WINDHOEK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Namibia’s central bank left its benchmark rate unchanged for a fifth consecutive meeting as it seeks to safeguard the country’s reserves and maintain its currency’s peg with the South African rand. The southwest African nation’s Monetary Policy Committee maintained its key interest rate at 6.75 percent Wednesday, Governor Ipumbu Shiimi told reporters in the capital, Windhoek. That’s the lowest since February 2016. Last month, its counterpart in South Africa kept its key gauge…

Uganda Keeps Key Rate at Record Low But Sees Prices Rising

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KAMPALA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Uganda’s central bank maintained its key interest rate at a record low but warned that inflation is set to accelerate from a 3 1/2-year low. The Monetary Policy Committee kept the benchmark rate at 9 percent, GovernorEmmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile told reporters Monday in the capital, Kampala. Growth in consumer prices slowed to 1.7 percent in May, the weakest level since 2014, and the risks to the inflation outlook in Africa’s biggest coffee exporter…

Ghana to Buy Contracts to Protect It From High Oil Prices

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ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghana will buy contracts to protect it from higher oil-product prices in the third quarter as the West African nation seeks to curb volatility in what consumers pay at the pump amid rising costs of the fuel in international markets. The government is putting together a risk-management program to go to the market “in a month or two” for options on crude, with the strike price yet to be…

Nigerian Banks’s Capital ratio at 3.4% under high stress scenario

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Moody’s Investors Service conducted a scenario analysis to measure the solvency of Nigerian banks under a base-case scenario and an alternative stress scenario during the 2018-19 period. It noted that the base-case scenario reflects its current macroeconomic forecasts for Nigeria, while the stress scenario measures the banks’ capacity to withstand high stress conditions and includes a set of assumptions for loan and asset growth and income reductions, among other…

South Africa Central Bank Sees Cryptos as Tokens, Not Currency

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s central bank chooses to call digital currencies such as Bitcoin “cyber-tokens” because they don’t meet the requirements to be classified as money. “We don’t use the term ‘cryptocurrency’ because it doesn’t meet the requirements of money in the economic sense of the stable means of exchange, a unit of measure and a stable unit of value,” Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Francois Groepe told reporters in Pretoria on Thursday….

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