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Macro Thoughts |
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My @realvision interview is out! @TonyNashOnAsia We discussed #China, #tradewar, $CNY, soybeans, corn, #DXY ( $USD), the #ECB, etc. Africa |
Published on: May 16th, 2019 • Duration: 32 minutes • Topic: China,
Debt, Demographics, Yuan, Credit-cycle, Macro
Tony Nash, founder of Complete Intelligence, sifts through the noise
regarding the trade war and discusses his current view on China. He
highlights the extreme buildup in debt over the past 20 years,
discusses the country’s poor demographics, and reviews where he thinks
the Chinese Yuan is headed next, in this interview with Jake Merl.
Filmed on May 15, 2019.
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China's latest retaliatory measure to raise tariffs on around $60 billion of U.S. goods may be about to push up prices for fans of American periodicals, lovers of a vodka-based cocktails, and anyone who wears makeup. Law & Politics |
Importers of U.S. seawater and reptiles are also in line for higher prices.
Tariffs will go up to 25% on around $900 million worth of beauty and
skincare products, including perfume, eye and lip make-up, nail polish
and pressed powder. After-shave, shampoo, hair gel, tooth paste,
dental floss, and mouthwash are also subject to higher duties.
In fact, beauty products were the second biggest category behind
liquefied natural gas in terms of value traded in 2018, among those
subject to the tariff hike from 10% to 25%.
These are just some of the 4,545 U.S. goods that will see raised
import taxes from June 1.
Juice made from oranges, grapefruits, pineapples or coconuts are also
on the list, as are vodka, gin, rum and tequila.
And tomato lovers may be hit as $4 million worth of preserved
tomatoes, ketchup, tubs of tomato paste, and juice are also subject to
the hike.
The lists also include $203 million of “newspapers, journals and
periodicals appearing less than four times a week,” printed books,
dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Musical instruments like pianos, electric keyboards, harmonicas,
percussion and brass-wind instruments, along with manuscript and
printed music also face higher import taxes.
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.@realDonaldTrump's @Huawei Threat Is the Nuclear Option to Halt China's Rise @economics Law & Politics |
The Trump administration is pulling out the big guns in its push to
slow China’s rise, with potentially devastating consequences for the
rest of the world.
The White House on Wednesday initiated a two-pronged assault on China:
barring companies deemed a national security threat from selling to
the U.S., and threatening to blacklist Huawei Technologies Co. from
buying essential components.
If it follows through, the move could cripple China’s largest
technology company, depress the business of American chip giants from
Qualcomm Inc. to Micron Technology Inc., and potentially disrupt the
rollout of critical 5G wireless networks around the world.
“The Trump administration action is a grave escalation with China,”
Eurasia Group analysts Paul Triolo, Michael Hirson and Jeffrey Wright
wrote in a note.
If fully implemented, the blacklist would “put at risk both the
company itself and the networks of Huawei customers around the world,
as the firm would be unable to upgrade software and conduct routine
maintenance and hardware replacement.”
The threat is likely to elevate fears in Beijing that President Donald
Trump’s broader goal is to contain China, leading to a protracted cold
war between the world’s biggest economies.
In addition to a trade fight that has rattled global markets for
months, the U.S. has pressured both allies and foes to avoid using
Huawei for 5G networks that will form the backbone of the modern
economy.
“@Huawei 5G, RIP. Thanks for playing,” U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, a
Republican from Arkansas, wrote on Twitter.
U.S. suppliers to Huawei including Lumentum Holdings Inc. and Qualcomm
Inc. are indicated to open lower in pre-market trading, after shares
in Asian suppliers including Sunny Optical Technology Group and AAC
Technologies Holdings Inc. dropped as much as 5% on Thursday.
In Europe, STMicroelectronics NV fell, while Huawei competitor Nokia
Oyj gained 2%.
Huawei has said it devotes about a third of its budget -- some $11
billion annually -- to the acquisition of American components. It
counts 33 U.S. companies among its top 92 suppliers.
“The negative impact on the global 5G market will be significant,”
said Charlie Dai, a Beijing-based analyst at Forrester Research,
nothing that Huawei is one of the market leaders globally.
“Nokia and Cisco could address the gap to some extent, but the overall
adoption will be slowed down, which eventually will be harmful to
telco carriers and consumers around the world.”
The Commerce Department said Wednesday it will soon put Huawei on an
“Entity List” -- meaning any U.S. company will need a special license
to sell products to the world’s largest networking gear maker.
Since American companies dominate semiconductors, that could smother
Huawei’s production of everything from 5G base stations to mobile
phones.
It may not even be able to use Google’s Android, the most popular
operating system globally for smartphones. A similar move last year
against ZTE Corp. -- China’s second-biggest telecom equipment company
-- nearly forced the company out of business.
"This could potentially lead to Huawei’s destruction,” said Scott
Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.
“You can’t underestimate the significance. It’s their most important
company and threatening it in this way will generate a massive public
response as well as from the Chinese government. The bilateral trade
talks were on thin ice and this could derail them entirely.”
At the heart of Trump’s concerted campaign is suspicion that Huawei
aids Beijing in espionage while spearheading China’s ambitions of
becoming a technology superpower.
The Justice Department also accuses it of willfully violating
sanctions on Iran, and last year engineered the arrest of the eldest
daughter of Huawei’s billionaire founder.
Huawei, which has denied those allegations, said Thursday it was
“ready and willing” to engage with the U.S. to ensure product
security. Restricting it from doing business “will only serve to limit
the U.S. to inferior yet more expensive alternatives,” it said in a
statement.
“We resolutely object to any country, based on their own laws,
unilaterally sanctioning Chinese entities,” Ministry of Commerce
spokesman Gao Feng said at a regularly scheduled briefing in Beijing
Thursday.
“We also object to the generalization of the national security concept
and abuse of export control methods.”
If the U.S. handicaps Huawei by cutting off suppliers, countries and
telecoms carriers around the world that are already spending billions
to build 5G networks may have to resort to pricier equipment from
Nokia Oyj and Ericsson AB.
Tying up a chunk of the world’s 5G gear supply would slow the
build-out of a technology that underpins future services from
self-driving cars to smart homes and advanced medicine.
Huawei appears to have anticipated this possibility. It’s been
developing and designing its own chips for years, which it now uses in
many of its own smartphones. It’s reportedly even developing its own
operating software to run phones and servers.
For now, though, it remains heavily reliant on American technology.
Huawei’s base station, smartphone, server and maritime cable
businesses simply cannot run without Qualcomm baseband and processor
chips. There are alternatives -- but from American peers such as Intel
Corp., Micron and Broadcom Corp.
It also depends on smaller American suppliers in key areas: Lumentum
Holdings Inc. for optical cable; Amphenol for fiber-optic connectors;
Inphi Corp. for analog chips; Qorvo Inc. and Analog Devices Inc. for
radio-frequency semiconductors in both 4G and 5G; and Western Digital
Corp. for storage. Texas Instruments Inc. supplies it with digital
signal processing chips. Huawei even uses Oracle Corp. software in
products sold to state-owned companies.
ZTE provides a roadmap for what may happen next. Huawei’s much smaller
rival in 2017 ran afoul of the Commerce Department for violating the
same Iranian sanctions, and then lying about it.
The subsequent ban on American exports pushed the company to the brink
of extinction, before Trump intervened as part of trade negotiations
with Beijing.
A blanket ban would hurt not just U.S. companies, but also alienate
American allies around the world. Many have resisted Washington’s
attempts to steer them away from Huawei, for reasons ranging from
economics to just the simple fact that the Shenzhen-based company’s 5G
technology is for now considered superior.
That’s why some observers, including the Eurasia Group, argue that the
White House is unlikely to bring the full force of a blacklist to
bear.
Instead, it argued, the Trump administration is likely to issue export
licenses to all of its American companies while retaining the option
in future to pull them if needed.
Roger Sheng at market research firm Gartner Inc. draws parallels with
the Chinese fable of the Monkey King, whose powers are constrained by
a magic circlet that his handler constricts -- painfully -- when the
deity misbehaves.
“The U.S. is putting a circlet around the head of Huawei,” said Sheng,
who is based in Shanghai.
“The impact goes well beyond its 5G ambitions because without American
suppliers like Qualcomm and Marvell, it can’t even maintain normal
operations.”
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Strange things are afoot in the Strait of Hormuz @TheEconomist Law & Politics |
WHEN DONALD TRUMP hired John Bolton to be his national security
adviser, he reportedly joked that the mustachioed hawk was “going to
get us into a war”. It is easy to see why. When serving under George
W. Bush, Mr Bolton embellished intelligence on Cuban and Syrian
weapons and lobbied hard for the invasion of Iraq. After leaving
government he argued that America should bomb Iran to set back its
nuclear programme. Now that he’s back, he appears to be on the warpath
once again.
It was Mr Bolton, not the commander-in-chief, who announced on May 5th
that America had dispatched an aircraft-carrier strike group and
bombers to the Persian Gulf. This was in response to undisclosed
intelligence which, unnamed officials claimed, showed that Iran and
its proxies were planning attacks on American forces (or its allies)
in the region. On May 9th Mr Bolton reviewed war plans, updated at his
request, that call for sending up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East
if Iran attacks or restarts work on nuclear weapons, according to the
New York Times. Such planning is not a sign of imminent conflict. But
Mr Trump is reported to be telling that joke again, now with more
seriousness, as Mr Bolton also ratchets up pressure on Venezuela.
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27-NOV-2017 :: Bitcoin "Wow! What a Ride!" International Trade |
Bitcoin has been the top- performing currency every year since 2010,
except 2014, and this year at +900%, the return has been parabolic
(off the charts). The parabola was described thus by Thomas Pynchon
“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It Is the
parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -guessed and refused
to believe- that everything, always, collectively, had been moving
toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no
surprise, no second chance, no return.’’
If you spend your life deeply immersed in the markets, then it is
necessary to sniff out these parabolic moves. And it’s better to do
right than say right as Edwin Lefevre noted nearly a century ago.
Or as T.S Eliot said in The Hollow Men
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom.
This, you will agree, is mind-boggling inflation. In my experience,
when I have found myself riding a tiger by its tail, the key issue is
the getting off and not trying to run the trade for every penny.
‘’One of the few men to get out in time before the Wall Street crash
of 1929 did so – legend has it – because he was offered a stock tip by
the boy who shined his shoes. He immediately sold all his holdings. If
the mania for gambling on the stock market had reached down to the
children on the streets, the bubble must have been due to pop at any
moment. The corresponding moment for the cryptocurrency bubble will
only be discernible in retrospect, but we have some pretty strong
candidates already. The endorsement of one project by the reality TV
star Paris Hilton has already happened.’’
There are many cryptocurrency schemes which are sold on the same
grounds as the greatest South Sea Bubble prospectus: “For carrying on
an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.”
My investment thesis at the start of the year was that Bitcoin was
going to get main-streamed in 2017. It has main-streamed beyond my
wildest dreams, therefore, I am now sidelined.
Let me leave you with Hunter S.Thompson, “Life should not be a journey
to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and
well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of
smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
“Wow! What a Ride!”
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Africa |
What’s clear is that a very young, very informed and very connected
African youth demographic [many characterise this as a ‘demographic
dividend’] – which for Beautiful Blaise turned into a demographic
terminator – is set to alter the existing equilibrium between the
rulers and the subjects, and a re-balancing has begun. We need to ask
ourselves; how many people can incumbent shoot stone cold dead in such
a situation – 100, 1,000, 10,000? This is another point: there is a
threshold beyond which the incumbent can’t go. Where that threshold
lies will be discovered in the throes of the event. Therefore, the
preeminent point to note is that protests in Burkina Faso achieved
escape velocity. Overthrowing incumbents is all about acceleration,
momentum and speed best characterised by the German word ‘Blitzkrieg’.
Nigeria alone is predicted to double to 400 million people by the
middle of the century, making it the world’s third-most populous
country after China and India.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s per-capita gross domestic product has climbed 40%
since the start of the century to $1,652, compared with $1,987 in
India.
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SUDAN Cutting a deal on a knife-edge @Africa_Conf Africa |
From armed clashes to roundtable talks to threats of a walk-out, the
transition jolts from crisis to crisis
Veering from armed clashes to roundtable talks, the negotiations
between the ruling generals and civilian activists remain fraught,
with hundreds of thousands of protesters camped outside key military
installations in Khartoum.
One day after several fatal shootings in the capital on 14 May, the
generals and the activists agreed on a three-year political
transition.
The outline of the deal – with civilians and military officers sharing
power on a sovereign national council with 11 members, a
civilian-dominated council of 17 ministers and a legislature of some
150 representatives with a definitive, negotiated end to the country's
armed conflicts – was announced jointly by the Transitional Military
Council (TMC) and the Declaration for Freedom and Change Forces
(DFCF).
That left a critical issue unsettled: the balance of power between
the military and civilians on the sovereign national council.
Then, late on 15 May, when the issue was due to be resolved, the
civilian negotiators said the military was refusing to continue
negotiations until all the protesters had dismantled the sit-in around
Alqiyada al Amaah, the military headquarters in the capital.
Other reports point to more splintering among the military and
security units, all concerned about their loss of power and financial
autonomy in a civilian-led transition.
General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as 'Hemeti', deputy leader of the
TMC and Commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), had already said
he would not tolerate 'chaos' and the interruption of business in the
capital by the protesters, despite his earlier support for the sit-in
(AC Vol 60 No 8, The revolution rumbles on).
A mercurial figure, Hemeti had tried to burnish his street cred by
publicly supporting the protesters, claiming he had deployed some of
his forces to protect them against attacks by armed units under the
command of Salah Mohamed Abdallah 'Gosh' and the National Intelligence
and Security Services (NISS). This time it looked even murkier.
In the days leading up to the shootings on 13 May, the RSF deployed
hundreds more armed pick-up trucks around the military HQ, encircling
the main protest site.
On 12 May, the more than 20 groups and parties making up the DFCF
called for an escalation of protests and strikes backing a transfer of
power to civilians and an agreement to be signed within 72 hours.
The following day, protesters put up brick and iron barricades along
Nile Street at the back of the University of Khartoum stopping traffic
along one of the city's main arteries.
The sit-in outside the military HQ had already blocked goods trains on
the main west-east railway line into the capital.
That evening, several reporters saw fighters dressed in RSF uniforms
shoot into the crowds of protesters around the Nile Street barricades.
The shooting went on into the night as unarmed protesters crawled
behind cars, parked alongside the riverside cafés.
Armed men also fired tear gas canisters into the crowd, later beating
some of those who could not get away.
Khalid Omer, Secretary General of the Sudanese Congress Party and a
leading member of the DFCF said his organisation held the TMC
responsible for the shootings.
The United States Embassy backed that view, saying the security forces
actions had 'led directly to unacceptable violence that the TMC was
unable to control.'
One of the first tests of the new transitional authority will be to
oversee an investigation into those shootings, and all the violence by
state forces that resulted in over 90 protesters being killed over the
past five months.
It could reveal continuing rivalries between armed factions as well
as the ability of the civilians to confront the military.
That will get harder as the transition moves on.
The next six months will be dominated by negotiations between the
transitional authority and armed opposition groups such as the Sudan
Liberation Movement led by Minni Minawi, the Justice and Equality
Movement led by Jibril Ibrahim and the Sudan People's Liberation
Movement–North whose factions are led by Malik Agar and Yasir Arman
(AC Vol 57 No 22, The securocrats get stronger).
The first phase will be for the new government to sign peace treaties
with each faction. Since the ousting of Beshir, almost all the armed
groups have agreed a bilateral ceasefire with the TMC.
Bringing all the factions into a coherent transitional authority and a
reformed military is likely to take most of the three years available.
Jealous of its firepower, political and financial autonomy, the
military commanders will try to dominate the reform programme.
Aside from calculations of military force, the other factor will be
the government's financial weakness and the urgent need to cut state
spending.
The economic strategies drawn up by technocrats close to the DFCF all
envisage substantial shifts in state spending towards the wider
economy, administration and social services but away from the
security-centric budgets under Beshir.
When asked about how the transitional authority would be able to take
down this system, Lt Gen Shamsudeen al Kabbashi, spokesman for the
TMC, replied: 'We have to dismantle it together'.
But he admitted that it could take decades. That suggests a project
well beyond the planned transition and raises questions about the good
faith of the military, many of whose senior officers were direct
beneficiaries of the Islamist Deep State.
As negotiations over the transition move into the details of economic
and political reform, both soldiers and civilians are preparing their
teams. Neither side was well known to the public before 10 April.
The Declaration for Freedom and Change Forces (DFCF), founded on 1
January as an amalgam between civic groups such as the Sudan
Professionals' Association and established parties, has led civilian
negotiators.
The DFCF is yet to choose a leader to be the top civilian in the
transition, probably an executive prime minister. The main names in
contention are: Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, an engineer and human rights
activist, formerly a political detainee in Kobar prison; Muntasir el
Tayeb Ibrahim, a professor of microbiology at University of Khartoum
and a leading force in the political agenda of the DFCF along with his
academic colleagues; and Abdalla Hamdok, special advisor to the
Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank and a former
Deputy Executive Director of the UN's Economic Commission for Africa
(AC Vol 52 No 1, Freedom – North and South & AC Vol 53 No 12, The new
Thabo Mbeki).
On the military side, two men dominate for now and are likely to hold
the ring in the proposed sovereign national council. They are
Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan, head of the
Transitional Military Council; and Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo 'Hemeti',
deputy head of the TMC and Commander of the Rapid Support Forces
(RSF).
Burhan is taciturn and stolid but thought to have kept his distance
from the Islamist factions that had penetrated the army under the rule
of President Omer el Beshir. With over 180,000 forces under his
command, Burhan should be the senior partner in this ruling duo.
But his relationship with Hemeti is complex. Hemeti's troops in the
RSF number about a third of the regular army but their salaries
average twice as much and they are better equipped.
Burhan and Hemeti's relationship dates back to Darfur in 2003. Then,
Burhan was commanding a military unit and worked with local militias
to attack opponents of Beshir's regime. One of those militias was the
Janjaweed, commanded by Hemeti, whose family hails from Chad.
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MTN Nigeria debuts in Lagos in $6.5 billion listing Reuters Africa |
MTN Nigeria, owned by South Africa’s MTN Group, listed in Lagos on
Thursday in a 2 trillion naira ($6.54 billion) flotation turning the
telecoms company into the exchange’s second-largest stock by market
value.
MTN Nigeria’s shares climbed 10 percent from their listing price of 90
naira after the float went live.
The company, which had 52.3 million users in Nigeria as of 2017, has
had fraught relations with the Nigerian authorities, including
disputes over SIM cards and tax payments.
The listing follows MTN Group’s agreement with Nigerian regulators to
settle most of those long-running disputes.
However, the company is still in the middle of a $2 billion tax row
with Nigeria’s attorney general, which the company says is delaying a
further sale of shares and a public offering.
Once that matter is resolved, MTN will sell more shares to the public,
and seek to increase local ownership of MTN Nigeria to 35% from the
current roughly 20%, its finance chief told investors in Lagos earlier
on Thursday, according to two of those investors.
Just before the flotation, parent MTN Group owned 78.8% of the
Nigerian business. MTN Nigeria accounts for a third of the
Johannesburg parent’s core profit.
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Sonangol's head rolls @Africa_Conf Africa |
The state oil company’s chair took the blame for chronic fuel
shortages but there are deeper currents at work
The sacking of Sonangol chair Carlos Saturnino Guerra Sousa e Oliveira
on 8 May is a deeply political affair, according to sources in Luanda.
Saturnino replaced the billionaire Isabel dos Santos as CEO of the
state oil company in late 2017, only two months after President João
Lourenço took office in what was then seen as one of his boldest moves
against the business and patronage network built during the 37-year
reign of his predecessor, José Eduardo dos Santos .
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@Total CEO says planned buy of Anadarko's Africa assets 'perfectly fitting' @ReutersAfrica Africa |
French energy giant Total SA’s planned acquisition of U.S. firm
Anadarko’s African assets is “perfectly fitting” with the company’s
overall strategy and helps play to its strengths, Chief Executive
Patrick Pouyanne said on Thursday.
Total agreed to buy all of Anadarko’s oil-and-gas-producing assets
outside the United States, including its biggest future expense, a
multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique, for
$8.8 billion.
The deal is contingent on the wider, $38 billion proposed takeover of
Anadarko Petroleum Corp by Occidental Petroleum Corp, which last month
outmaneuvered rival Chevron, the No. 2 U.S. oil producer, which had
also bid for Anadarko.
Speaking at an event in Washington, Pouyanne said the oil major has
had its eyes on Anadarko’s Africa assets, which stretch from Algeria
to South Africa, for more than a year.
“What we tell to investors is we play to our strengths. What are the
strengths of Total? It is the Middle East, Africa, North Sea, Deep
Water. ... It is just fitting exactly and perfectly with what we
announced,” Pouyanne said.
Pouyanne’s move to buy Anadarko’s assets, the French firm’s biggest
acquisition since taking over Elf almost two decades ago, will bolster
his effort to refocus Total on operations in Africa, the North Sea,
deep offshore and liquefied natural gas.
“In fact...we have been looking at these assets more than a a year. We
have had some discussions before with Anadarko,” Pouyanne said. “It
was not a lot of creativity to fix that these assets are not very well
fitting for upstream and that there was a potential match between Oxy
and Total.”
“So it’s just a matter of sending an email to my colleague, then I was
ringing her,” Pouyanne said, in apparent reference to Occidental CEO
Vicki Hollub, who put together a strategy that beat Chevron, which is
nearly five times larger than Occidental.
Total has built up a strong balance sheet under Pouyanne since the
2014 oil price crash, giving him the firepower to swoop on Anadarko’s
assets. The company has made acquisitions worth almost $20 billion in
the past five years, under Pouyanne’s leadership.
It took Pouyanne and a small group of advisers just days to line up
Total’s bid for Anadarko’s Africa assets and by keeping those in the
know to a minimum, the French CEO was able to stay flexible in
negotiations, take a swift decision and ensure there were no leaks
before the announcement.
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Kenya Eurobond Pricing 'Favorable' Despite Lack of @IMFNews Deal @markets Kenyan Economy |
Investors didn’t punish Kenya in its latest Eurobond placement and
demanded relatively low premiums despite the East African nation’s
lack of precautionary measures to guard against exogenous shocks to
its balance of payments.
Kenya’s $900 million seven-year bonds were priced at 7% and its
12-year paper for $1.2 billion received 8%. Following in Ghana’s
footsteps, the East African nation went to the market without a
standby facility from the International Monetary Fund.
“It’s a very favorable rate given that Kenya hasn’t finalized an
agreement with the IMF,” said Vinita Kotedia, macro-strategist for
sub-Saharan Africa at EFG-Hermes. “It looks like investors were more
focused on the credibility of debt issues out of Kenya, and they
aren’t too worried.”
The pricing was much lower than the initial pricing thoughts of 7.5%
and 8.5% and the fair-value prices of 7.125% and 8.125%, the Treasury
said Thursday in a statement on its website.
Ghana’s seven-year Eurobonds issued in March were priced at 7.875%
while its 12-year securities were at 8.125%. The West African oil and
cocoa producer received almost $20 billion in offers and took $3
billion in three-tranche maturities that included 31-year paper.
Investors placed bids for a total $9.5 billion, an “indication of
Kenya’s good macro-economic backdrop as well as broader appetite for
African paper,” according to Neville Mandimika and Celeste Fauconnier,
analysts at FirstRand Ltd.’s Johannesburg-based Rand Merchant Bank
unit.
While Kenyan Treasury officials begun the roadshow last week, the
ongoing dispute between the U.S. and China over tariffs could have
delayed the issue, they said.
“However, given the current yield curve, the pricing is favorable and
provides a conducive backdrop for the new issuance to compress in the
secondary market,” the RMB analysts said in an emailed note.
Kenya should ideally have gone to market two months ago, according to
Jibran Qureishi, a regional economist at Nairobi-based Stanbic
Holdings Plc.
Investors haven’t shrugged off IMF concerns, but rather consoled
themselves that Kenya failed to meet fiscal targets set out in the
previous precautionary arrangement, he said.
“There’s a broad consensus and agreement that Kenya does not face a
balance of payments crisis similar to a country like Zambia,” he said
by phone.
“The market will still pay close attention to the IMF in the coming
months and they’ll probably be keen to see whether Kenya gets the IMF
facility back on board,” Qureishi said.
Kenyan Eurobonds due next month added 3 basis points to 6.248% by 3:56
p.m. in Nairobi, while those maturing in June 2024 lost 6 basis points
to 6.346%.
“The pricing and the shorter maturities than originally planned
indicate a decreased appetite for Kenyan debt among investors. This
could be due to concern about the debt buildup and the cost-efficiency
of flagship projects such as the standard-gauge railway.” --Mark
Bohlund, economist
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