FX Currency | - Part 3

Zambia Favors Kwacha Debt Over Eurobonds for 2018 Financing

LUSAKA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Zambia won’t sell dollar debt in 2018 as it focuses on raising kwacha loans and increasing tax collection, Finance Minister Felix Mutati said. The government plans to borrow 11.2 billion kwacha ($1.2 billion) from the domestic market next year, more than triple the amount in the 2017 budget. This is part of its strategy to tilt funding in favor of the local market, after external debt bulged to $7.5 billion by mid-year…

Zimbabwe Dollar Dearth Causes Shortages, Return of Inflation

Posted on by The Editorial Team

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – Zimbabwe’s money shortage has seen card and mobile-money payments eclipse cash sales at the nation’s retailers, throttling suppliers’ stock of hard currency needed to put goods on shelves and forcing up food prices. Cash transactions have shrunk to about 2 percent of daily takings across the 33-store Spar Zimbabwe chain, from 60 percent a year ago, Managing Director Terence Yeatman said. Consumer prices as measured by the statistics agency rose 0.1…

Kenyan Politics Limbo Hinders Central Bank on Currency Risk

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NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – On Monday, Kenya’s central bank may have little choice but to do what the rest of the country is stuck with: waiting for a rerun of its presidential election. With political limbo reigning since the Supreme Court’s annulment of the previous attempt at a national vote on Aug. 8, officials are left contemplating the effects of prolonged uncertainty on an economy that also faces slowing growth and persistent inflation….

Tunisia Eyes GDP Growth, Currency Reform, to Boost Economy

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TUNIS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Tunisia’s government is looking to double economic growth, slash its budget deficit and revise some currency restrictions in an effort to revive its struggling economy. Prime Minister Yousef El-Shahed told parliament the government seeks to raise economic growth to 5 percent in 2020 compared with an expected rate of 2.5 percent this year and would work to halve the budget deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product by that…

Nigeria’s Half-Measures on Currency Are Only Half-Working

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – A year after Nigeria scrapped a currency peg that sent foreign investors fleeing, it’s still battling to entice them back. But trying to placate investors by introducing multiple exchange rates isn’t going to work, bond funds and Wall Street lenders including Citigroup Inc. say. To end the dollar shortage that has hamstrung West Africa’s biggest economy and oil producer, President Muhammadu Buhari and central bank Governor Godwin Emefiele will have to weaken the naira’s official rate again,…

Nigeria May End Multiple Naira Rates in Quest for Inflows

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria will end a system of multiple exchange rates that has deterred investment in its stocks and bonds, according to the head of the country’s main currency-trading platform. The central bank and Lagos-based FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange are taking a “phased approach toward a single foreign-exchange market,” according to Bola Onadele. “There is opportunity for convergence and there is no better time for it,” Onadele, also known as Koko, said…

Parallel Market Emerges in Nigeria’s Currency-Trading World

Posted on by The Editorial Team

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – A kind of parallel universe is taking shape in Nigeria’s foreign-exchange market. The African country’s traditional forwards market is facing competition from an upstart based on the new exchange-rate window policy makers opened six weeks ago. Bond investors and speculators are switching away from non-deliverable forwards that are linked to the main interbank exchange rate, which is tightly controlled by the central bank, and embracing the more liberal pricing…

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