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Tuesday 17th of January 2017
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Morning Africa |
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0930-1500 KENYA TIME
Normal Board - The Whole shebang
Prompt Board Next day settlement
Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site
http://www.rich.co.ke |
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WORLD ECONOMIC OUTLOOK (WEO) UPDATE A Shifting Global Economic Landscape @IMFNews Africa |
With these caveats, aggregate growth estimates and projections for
2016–18 remain unchanged relative to the October 2016 World Economic
Outlook. The outlook for advanced economies has improved for 2017–18,
reflecting somewhat stronger activity in the second half of 2016 as
well as a projected fiscal stimulus in the United States. Growth
prospects have marginally worsened for emerging market and developing
economies, where financial conditions have generally tightened.
Near-term growth prospects were revised up for China, due to expected
policy stimulus, but were revised down for a number of other large
economies—most notably India, Brazil, and Mexico.
Advanced economies are now projected to grow by 1.9 percent in 2017
and 2.0 percent in 2018
Notably, the growth forecast for 2017 was revised up for China (to 6.5
percent, 0.3 percentage point above the October forecast) on
expectations of continued policy support.
IMF Projections for SSA
SSA 2015 3.4% 2016 1.6% 2017 2.8%
Nigeria 2015 2.7% 2016 -1.5% 2017 +0.8%
South Africa 2015 1.3% 2016 0.3% 2017 +0.8%
Home Thoughts
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The Paris peace conference was beyond useless - everyone knows a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine is impossible now Law & Politics |
Netanyahu called it “the last twitches of the world of yesterday”, the
autocratic Mahmoud Abbas didn’t bother to turn up and Theresa May’s
secretary of state for buffoonery only sent a clutch of underlings.
John Kerry, who said two years ago that peace between Israelis and
Palestinians had at the most 18 months to succeed “or it’s over”,
announced lamely that the gathering of 70 nations in Paris had “moved
the ball forward” – whatever that means. So what was it all for?
And the rest of the Arabs? Oh lordy, lordy. We embrace the
head-choppers of the Gulf, the dictator of Egypt and the “rebels” of
Syria. We sell weapons to the Saudis to bomb the Yemenis – which may
“harden” the Yemeni position quite a lot – and send money to Lebanon
to keep the Syrian refugees in situ because their further presence
among us would be “deeply unsettling”. We loved the rebels of Aleppo
and hate the rebels of Mosul and any comparison between them would no
doubt be highly “inappropriate”. Now that’s a “subliminal message” if
ever there was one. It’s called “moving the ball forward”.
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The Trump interviews: what he said about Brexit, Putin, Israel, Syria ... and Twitter Law & Politics |
The Times: Trump said he believed Brexit was “going to end up being a
great thing” because people wanted to reclaim their identity from the
European Union. Other countries would leave as well and it would be
hard to keep the EU from falling apart under the pressure of
immigration, he said. The refugee crisis which started in 2015 had
been the “straw that broke the camel’s back” in terms of popular
support for a unified Europe. “If they hadn’t been forced to take in
all of the refugees, so many, with all the problems that it . . .
entails, I think that you wouldn’t have a Brexit. This was the final
straw that broke the camel’s back. . . I believe others will leave. I
do think keeping it together is not gonna be as easy as a lot of
people think.”
The EU was basically a vehicle for Germany, he said, and “that’s why I
thought the UK was so smart in getting out”.
“I’m a big fan of the UK, we’re gonna work very hard to get it done
quickly and done properly. Good for both sides. We’ll have a meeting
[with Theresa May] right after I get into the White House and . . .
we’re gonna get something done very quickly.”
Trump said whilst he had “great respect” for Merkel, who is standing
for a fourth term as chancellor next autumn, calling her “magnificent”
and a “fantastic chief”, she had made an “utterly catastrophic mistake
by letting all these illegals into the country”. He told Bild: “Do you
know, letting all these people in, wherever they come from. And no one
knows where they come from at all. You will find out, you’ve had a
clear impression of that,” he said, referring to the December attack
in Berlin in which 12 people were killed when a lorry driven by an
asylum seeker from Tunisia careered into a Christmas market.
“So I am of the opinion that she made a catastrophic mistake, a very
serious mistake. But putting that aside, I respect her, I like her.
But I don’t know her,” he said, when asked whether he would be willing
to support her reelection, as his predecessor Barack Obama said he
would. “So I can’t say anything as to who I might support, in the case
that I would support anyone.”
The Times: Trump repeated his criticism of Nato, one of the mainstays
of American foreign policy for decades, calling it “obsolete” for
failing to contain the terror threat in western countries. Her also
complained that some countries “don’t pay what they should pay.”
However, he added that “Nato is very important to me”.
Trump proposed a 35% tax on every foreign car sold in America which
was produced elsewhere – seen as a particular dig at BMW
The Times: Trump said he would not reveal the details of his policy –
“I just don’t want to play the cards” – but reiterated his attack on
Barack Obama’s landmark deal with Iran on nuclear weapons. “I’m not
happy with the Iran deal, I think it’s one of the worst deals ever
made, I think it’s one of the dumbest deals I’ve ever seen . . . Where
you give . . . $150bn back to a country, where you give $1.7bn in
cash. Did you ever see $100m in hundred-dollar bills? It’s a lot.
$1.7bn in cash. Plane loads.”
The Times: Trump floated the idea of reviewing sanctions on Russia if
Vladimir Putin was prepared to move away from confrontation. “They
have sanctions on Russia – let’s see if we can make some good deals
with Russia. For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down
and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it. But Russia’s
hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think
something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit.”
Bild: Trump said he thought security zones should have been set up in
Syria. “That would have been considerably cheaper. And the Gulf states
should have had to pay for them. After all, they have money like
hardly anyone else has. The whole thing would have been considerably
cheaper than the trauma that Germany is now going through. I would
have said: create security zones in Syria.”
He refused to be drawn on whether he would move the US embassy from
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “I’m not going to comment on that. But we’ll
see.”
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Why Russia Is Using the Internet to Undermine Western Democracy By Maria Farrell Law & Politics |
American “soft power” seems anything but benign to leaders of
autocracies. To them, the much-touted ability of tech giants like
Twitter and Facebook to facilitate revolutions looks like deliberate
sedition by a foreign power.
Russia’s leaders already see Western conspiracy everywhere: the Orange
Revolution, the Arab Spring, the entire internet. All of these play
out in Moscow as plots by the U.S. and its allies to ensure the world
order protects only Western values and therefore Western interests.
And we play right into their hands, saying the internet is a
samizdat—the famously hand-copied literature of opposition to Soviet
rule—and claiming the Che Guevara of the 21st-century is a network.
(And rather ahistorically, too, given the United States’ violent
antipathy to Guevara’s aims.)
Does the internet drive people-powered revolutions? Maybe. It’s
complicated. But 2011 began with the Arab Spring chasing out the
rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, and ended with Moscow’s middle classes
taking to the streets in Facebook-organized protests against electoral
corruption. Facebook did more than just make it easier to organize; in
a year of popular revolution, it let some Russians feel they were part
of something bigger, that they had a chance. It was a profound shock
to Putin’s government. To Putin’s ex-KGB mindset, there is no such
thing as spontaneous, popular protest. In his world, power is
vertical. Someone is always pulling the strings. So the Russian state
married its existential pessimism to the West’s internet cheerleading.
The internet had to be brought under control.
So Russia did the only thing it could: It took the West’s proudest,
strongest, most transformational tool and helped to turn it against
us. Internet jiujitsu, in the form of information war (what we used to
call propaganda) and cyberwar (plain old hacking and sabotage), turned
the energy of the networks against their creators.
Russia almost certainly hacked the computers of U.S. election
officials and the Democratic National Committee, and funneled its
damning findings through willing stooges. This is not a fringe view.
We still don’t know whether the U.S. president-elect shares more with
Vladimir Putin than just an onanistic cult of toxic masculinity. Links
between the U.S. right and the Kremlin are murky, though I expect more
information will emerge. But even if we find proof, millions of
Americans will simply refuse to believe it. Homegrown propaganda sites
will amplify and disseminate disinformation, as they did all through
the U.S. election. Russia’s adversary during the U.S. presidential
election was not Hillary Clinton but faith in the American electoral
process.
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05-DEC-2016 :: "We have a deviate, Tomahawk." Law & Politics |
The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice
breaks in, “a voice that carried with it a strange and unspecifiable
poignancy”.
He checks in with his flight-dynamics and conceptual- paradigm
officers at Colorado Command:
“We have a deviate, Tomahawk.”
“We copy. There’s a voice.”
“We have gross oscillation here.”
“ There’s some interference. I have gone redundant but I’m not sure
it’s helping.”
“We are clearing an outframe to locate source.”
“ Thank you, Colorado.”
“It is probably just selective noise. You are negative red on the
step-function quad.”
“It was a voice,” I told them.
“We have just received an affirm on selective noise... We will
correct, Tomahawk. In the meantime, advise you to stay redundant.”
The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange of
repartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetest
sadness”.
“Somehow we are picking up signals from radio programmes of 40, 50, 60
years ago.”
I have no doubt that Putin ran a seriously 21st predominantly digital
programme of interference which amplified the Trump candidacy. POTUS
Trump was an ideal candidate for this kind of support.
Trump is a linguistic warfare specialist.
The first thing is plausible deniability (and some folks here at home
need to remember those words). The second thing is non-linearity, you
have to learn how to navigate a linear system (the new 21st digital
ecosystem) in a non-linear way.
From feeding the hot-house conspiracy frenzy on line (‘’a constant
state of destabilised perception’’), timely and judicious doses of
Wikileaks leaks which drained Hillary’s bona fides and her turn-out
and motivated Trump’s, what we have witnessed is something remarkable
and noteworthy.
Putin has proven himself an information master, and his adversaries
are his information victims.
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What's behind growing economic gap? @AJEnglish @AJInsideStory @Oxfam @wef @Winnie_Byanyima Video Law & Politics |
The gap between the poor and the super rich is growing. The world's
eight richest people have the same wealth as the poorest half of the
entire world.
That's according to a new report by Oxfam, which describes this trend
as obscene, unfair and grotesque.
The eight men are mostly American, including Microsoft's Bill Gates,
investor Warren Buffett and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.
Oxfam warns this economic inequality threatens to pull societies apart
and undermine democracy.
Its report says people have lost trust in their governments and are no
longer willing to accept the status quo.
The anti-poverty organisation suggests that may help explain Donald
Trump's victory in the US presidential election. And the UK's vote to
leave the EU. So what needs to be done to reduce wealth inequality?
Presenter: Laura Kyle
Guests:
Deborah Hardoon - Deputy head of research at Oxfam
Aly Khan Satchu - CEO of Rich Markets and an emerging-markets economist
Ben Southwood - Head of Research at Adam Smith Institute
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Brazil Drought Deja Vu Makes Coffee 2017's Commodity Winner Commodities |
Coffee futures are on a tear as regions of Brazil beleaguered by
drought last year are heading for more of the same parched conditions.
There’s been no significant rain for almost a month in Espirito Santo
state, the nation’s top grower of the robusta variety. It’s gotten so
dry that the government has reinstated limits on irrigation from
rivers.
Prices for robusta, used in instant coffee, are near a four-year high
in London on concern supplies will drop. That’s also boosting the
aroma-rich arabica beans, with futures posting the biggest advance of
2017 among components of the Bloomberg Commodity Index. Last week,
hedge funds lifted their bets on a rally for the first time in two
months.
Prices jumped 4.5 percent last week to $1.493 a pound on ICE Futures
U.S. in New York, the largest rally since October. Robusta futures in
London climbed 2.9 percent last week.
The 2016 robusta crop in Brazil, the world’s biggest coffee grower and
exporter, shrank to the smallest in a decade. Futures posted an annual
gain of 40 percent, while arabica climbed 8.2 percent.
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Mozambique to miss bond payment, in talks to resume IMF help FT Africa |
Mozambique is in talks with its creditors and the International
Monetary Fund to find a solution to its debt woes after it said it
would not be able to make looming interest payments on a bond due
later this week.
The southern African country, which is facing its worst economic
crisis since a civil war ended in 1992, said it would not be able to
pay a $59.8m coupon on a bond maturing in 2023 due on Wednesday,
threatening to escalate its debt crisis into a default.
The country’s finance ministry said it was working with its private
sector creditors “to find a solution”, in a statement.
“The resulting debt payment capacity of the Republic is therefore
extremely limited in 2017, and does not allow the Republic room to
make the scheduled interest payment”, said the government.
The ministry said it is also in talks with the IMF to secure “an early
resumption” of financial assistance after the fund and other donors
suspended an aid programme in the wake of a revelation a state-owned
fishing company misspent the funds.
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Uganda Says First Phase of Railway to Kenya to Cost $2.3 Billion Africa |
China Harbour Engineering Co. is preparing to start building the
273-kilometer (170-mile) standard-gauge section that will link
Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and the Kenyan border, a phase that will
take 40 months to complete, project coordinator Kasingye Kyamugambi
said in an e-mailed response to questions on Jan. 13. Uganda is
borrowing money from the Export-Import Bank of China for the project
with details still being finalized, he said, declining to comment on
the size of the loan.
Uganda, which plans to start producing oil by about 2020, is seeking
to build a combined 1,724 kilometers of standard-gauge railway as part
of a regional project eventually connecting the capitals of Kenya,
Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan. The entire regional network will span
about 3,200 kilometers, according to Kyamugambi.
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Kenya's economic growth rate will slow in 2017 @IMFNews Kenyan Economy |
Kenya's economic growth rate will slow in 2017, from about 6 percent
last year, due to sluggish credit growth and as investors take a
wait-and-see attitude before a presidential election in August, a
senior IMF official said on Monday.
Armando Morales, the International Monetary Fund's representative in
Kenya, said growth is likely to remain within the 5-6 percent range of
the past five years, despite the slowdown.
"We expect a deceleration of growth for several reasons, but I think
the most important reason we are considering is the potential impact
of the interest rate cap on credit growth," he told Reuters in an
interview.
The government capped commercial lending rates at 400 basis points
above the central bank's lending rate last September, hurting already
stressed private sector credit growth.
After September, banks' lending grew by just 5 percent year-on-year,
down from 17.8 percent in December 2015. Stricter supervision of banks
by the central bank and the closure of two mid-sized lenders had cut
credit growth before the rate cap came in.
The IMF's 2017 economic growth forecast for the East African nation
will be released later this month after its board meets to review a
$1.5 billion precautionary arrangement that was agreed in 2015 and is
set to run until March 2018.
President Uhuru Kenyatta is seeking a second and final term of office
in an election on Aug. 8. He is expected to face off with his main
rival, Raila Odinga.
A disputed election result in 2007 led to violence that killed around
1,250 people. Odinga challenged the outcome of the 2013 election but
the result was upheld by the country's Supreme Court.
Morales said investment delays due to concerns over the election were
to be expected, but that the government's investments in
infrastructure, including roads and railways, would support demand and
economic growth.
"We believe it is going to be a reasonable deceleration; it is not
like the economy will lose momentum. It is only that there are other
factors at play," he said.
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N.S.E Today |
International markets are awaiting Prime Minister Theresa May's
headline Brexit Speech today with baited breath.
Early whispers are pointing towards a ''Hard'' Brexit and this sent
Sterling to below 1.200 versus the Dollar early this week. Sterling
was at 1.2240 last rebounding from that low.
I am listening to Prime Minister Theresa May as I file this and she
has threaded the Needle with elegance and precision.
The Dollar was sold aggressively in the FX markets after US
President-elect Donald Trump broke the tradition of presidents
refraining from commenting on the U.S. dollar’s level and went
directly into it in an interview with the WSJ
The Journal reported:
Mr. Trump said the U.S. dollar was already “too strong” in part
because China holds down its currency, the yuan. “Our companies can’t
compete with them now because our currency is too strong. And it’s
killing us.”
The yuan is “dropping like a rock,” Mr. Trump said, dismissing recent
Chinese actions to support it as done simply “because they don’t want
us to get angry.”
The US buyout group Carlyle has agreed to buy Africa’s largest rating agency.
The acquisition of Global Credit Ratings (GCR), which rates more
credits in Africa than global rivals Fitch, Moody’s and Standard &
Poor’s, is a savvy bet on the growth of African Capital Markets.
The Nairobi All Share could not build on yesterdays +0.27% bounce and
closed -0.18 points at 124.09.
The NSE20 retreated -25.76 points to close at 2929.68 a Fresh 2008 Low.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom which opened this morning -6.266% in 2017 closed unchanged
at 17.95 and traded 5.467m shares. Todays price action might be
signalling the downdraft is now exhausted. The share is oversold.
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
Standard Chartered soared 5.8% in Hong Kong which is a big move.
Barron's mused that ''A more plausible reason is that StanChart is a
good hedge against Brexit shorts'' Standard Chartered closed unchanged
at 179.00 on light trading.
KCB Group rebounded +1.85% to close at 27.50 and traded 1.567m shares.
Barclays Bank Kenya eased -1.86% to close at 7.90 and traded 4.001m
shares. Barclays Bank is oversold at -13.186% in 2017.
Kenya Re rallied +3.44% to close at 22.50 and traded 1.414m shares.
Kenya Re is unchanged Year to Date which is in fact a strong showing.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
BAT has agreed a takeover of Reynolds in $49.4bn deal.
The BAT Press Office said this
''Based on BAT’s share price and the Dollar-Sterling exchange rate as
at market close on 16 January 2017, the purchase price implies a total
current value of $49.4 billion for the remaining 57.8% of Reynolds not
owned by BAT, comprised of approximately $24.4 billion in cash and
$25.0 billion in BAT ADRs''
BAT Kenya followed on yesterdays +5.88% rally to gain a further 1% and
close at 909.00 on good sized volume action of 210,000 shares worth
191.076m. BAT is unchanged in 2017 and the price has a great deal of
headroom.
BAT Kenya share price data here +0.00% 2017
http://www.rich.co.ke/rcdata/company.php?i=Mjk%3D
Carbacid was high-ticked +6.53% to close at 13.05 on just 100 shares.
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