The Markets

ABIDJAN (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ivory Coast said it opened a tender to secure 500 billion CFA francs ($865 million) in commercial loans from offshore lenders as the West African nation seeks cheaper options than selling international bonds to finance its budget. In addition to the loans, the country will issue 900 billion francs in debt securities on the regional market to meet its finance needs of 1.4 trillion francs for the year, Prime…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – While daily rolling blackouts in South Africa are disrupting businesses and the lives of its people, the country’s stock market is powering ahead. As of Tuesday’s close, Johannesburg’s benchmark stock index is heading for its best quarter since September 2013 and poised to advance for a fourth consecutive month, the first time that’s happened since May 2016. The 8.3 percent in gains this year has pushed stocks to their highest in…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria may have about the best-performing Eurobonds in emerging markets this year, but the West African nation says it will prioritize borrowing from concessional lenders such as the World Bank and African Development Bank as it looks to rein in interest payments. “If you were to ask me if we’re going to issue Eurobonds this year, I’d say we’ll explore all the options,” Patience Oniha, head of the Debt Management…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghana will work with the market to determine the tenure of possible longer-dated bonds for a future debt issuance after raising $3 billion this week, said Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta. The world’s second-biggest cocoa producer sold Eurobonds in a three-part dealwith an average maturity of seven, 12 and 31 years after receiving $19.9 billion in offers, Ofori-Atta said in an interview Wednesday with Nejra Cehic and Manus Cranny on Bloomberg Television. Last…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Damage caused by Cyclone Idai to pylons in Mozambique that carry power to neighboring countries may take weeks to repair, a state-power company official said. The damage to Mozambican infrastructure has exacerbated rolling outages in South Africa, where state-owned utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. is struggling to bring faulty generating units back online. Mozambique’s 2,075-megawatt Cahora Bassa hydropower dam supplies almost three-quarters of its output to South Africa along a 1,400-kilometer…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Sibanye Gold Ltd. said a South African court ruling that it can extend a wage agreement reached with three unions to a fourth could pave the way to ending a strike by thousands of workers at its gold mines. Should a verification exercise determine that those three unions — the National Union of Mineworkers, UASA and Solidarity — together account for more than 50 percent of the company’s gold-mining workforce,…

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghana’s $3 billion Eurobond offering on Tuesday attracted bids that were more than six times the amount issued, according to a government official. The sale’s orderbook was about $20 billion, the country’s Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta told Bloomberg TV, a sign appetite for risky assets is still going strong. Ghana joins a slew of emerging-market borrowers who took advantage of the dovish turn in some of the world’s most important central…