Banking

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Several central banks and the Bank for International Settlements have developed prototypes for a common digital currencies platform that has the potential to make cross-border payments more efficient. The two prototypes demonstrate the technical viability of such a platform, the BIS said in a statement Tuesday with the Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank Negara Malaysia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the South African Reserve Bank. Codenamed “Project Dunbar,”…

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghana’s central bank will need to raise interest rates further this year unless a decline in the cedi is arrested, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.and Absa Group Ltd. said. The West African nation increased borrowing costs by the biggest margin in two decades on Monday to arrest inflation that accelerated at the fastest pace in almost six years in February and stem a depreciation in the cedi. The currency has weakened more than 17%…

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Egypt hiked its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2017 at an unscheduled meeting and let its currency weaken sharply as it moved to absorb shocks from global inflationary pressures.  The central bank raised the deposit and lending rates by 100 basis points each to 9.25% and 10.25% respectively, the Monetary Policy Committee said Monday. A combination of soaring commodity and energy prices and a wave of global monetary…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria’s central bank left its benchmark interest rate unchanged as it seeks to boost growth in an economy battling with gasoline shortages and power failures amid rising imported inflation.  Six members of the monetary policy committee who attended the one-day meeting voted to keep the rate at 11.5%, Governor Godwin Emefiele said Monday in a virtual briefing from the capital, Abuja. This matched economists forecasts of a hold in…

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) – The Bank of Ghana increased its benchmark interest rate for the second time since November, raising it to a three-year high of 17%, saying already high inflation was being worsened by the Russia-Ukraine war.The monetary policy committee lifted the rate by 250 basis points, Governor Ernest Addison told reporters in Accra Monday. That exceeded the median estimate of seven economists in a Bloomberg survey, which expected an increase of 100 basis…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank will take the “necessary steps” to get inflation down even if that means increasing interest rates more rapidly than currently anticipated and eventually to levels that slow the broader economy. Policy makers raised the benchmark lending rate by a quarter point at their meeting last week, the first increase since December 2018, and signaled six more hikes of that…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The obituaries for the London interbank offered rate may have been written, but as businesses, consumers and investors brace for a likely tightening of U.S. monetary policy it remains a keenly watched bellwether for financial conditions — for now at least. The three-month dollar rate, one of the few of the Libor suite to get a temporary reprieve and still be published until mid next year, has risen in…