Finance

ADDIS ABABA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Ethiopia’s government wants to find a “market friendly” solution for a planned debt restructuring to ensure it has access to the markets for more capital in coming years, State Minister for Finance Eyob Tekalign Tolina said. Eyob set out the state’s intentions on a call with investors on Thursday to discuss the proposed reorganization of Ethiopia’s loans under a Group-of-20 initiative. “We want this liability exercise to not…

MAPUTO (Capital Markets in Africa) — Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi has finally softened his stiff-necked resistance to foreign assistance in the fight against an Islamist insurgency in the country’s north. Help has been at hand for many months — from other African nations as well as from the U.S. and Europe — but Nyusi would have none of it. Instead, he put his faith in private security firms from Russia and South Africa. On Thursday,…

JOHANNEBURG (Bloomberg) — MTN Group Ltd. is valuing its mobile-money arm at about $5 billion, joining African wireless carriers planning to list these businesses in a region that has more mobile-money accounts than anywhere else in the world. MTN’s valuation of its unit follows Mastercard Inc. and TPG Holdings LPinvesting $300 million in Airtel Africa’s mobile-money business at a $2.65 billion value. “With similar valuations to that of Airtel, our valuation would sit at 75 billion rand, or…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — The International Monetary Fund upgraded its global economic growth forecast for the second time in three months, while warning about widening inequality and a divergence between advanced and lesser-developed economies. The global economy will expand 6% this year, up from the 5.5% pace estimated in January, the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook published on Tuesday. That would be the most in four decades of data, coming after…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) — The International Monetary Fund approved a $2.34 billion financing package for Kenya to support the country’s Covid-19 response and address an urgent need to reduce debt vulnerabilities. Approval of the so-called Extended Credit Facility and Extended Fund Facility will enable immediate disbursement of about $307.5 million for budget support in the East African nation, the Washington-based lender said Saturday in an emailed statement. “Kenya was hit hard at the onset…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — The tax plan President Joe Biden laid out last week will likely hit technology and pharmaceutical companies particularly hard, although the challenge for legislators will be to minimize loopholes that could diminish the impact, tax experts said. Much of the most valuable assets at pharmaceutical and tech companies is intellectual property, like patents and algorithms — intangibles that make it easier for them to structure global operations in a…