|
Afternoon, Africa |
Register and its all Free.
If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox as your Browser. 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
Macro Thoughts |
read more |
|
"They chose to come and fight for the freedom of Hong Kong" @TheEconomist Law & Politics |
“THEY FIRED plastic bullets at us!” Breathless from running, a young man holding a white flannel over his face shakes his head in disbelief at the response of the police. Other youngsters lie on the floor washing the residues of pepper spray from their faces. Similar scenes have played out throughout Hong Kong on June 12th, after violent confrontations between riot police and mainly young protesters. Tensions had been rising for days over plans by the Legislative Council (Legco) to pass a law allowing Hong Kong to send suspected criminals to mainland China, where many fear they would not get a fair trial. Before 9am, with little resistance from the police, protesters closed large roads surrounding the government district. Cars were abandoned where they sat in traffic jams. Outside Legco a line of priests led the crowd in a chorus of “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord”. Others berated policemen for turning against their fellow citizens. Experience had shown them what they needed, and most came suitably equipped: masks, goggles and scarves for protecting mouths, eyes and bodies from pepper spray and tear gas; and the ubiquitous umbrellas, symbols of Hong Kong’s protest movement since 2014. One protester, Ricky, spoiling for a fight, said: “Unless you come down and are prepared to take risks, don’t come.” Shouts of “ga yau!”, a call of encouragement literally translating as “add oil!”, or “keep it up!”, rang out as spare umbrellas and yellow construction helmets were passed up to the front line of protesters. Hong Kong’s riot police are a fearsome sight. All wear thick arm-length gloves and carry batons and plastic shields. Some carry weapons to fire rubber bullets. For most of the morning they seemed intent only on forming a tight circle to protect the offices of the chief executive, the civil service and Legco. Around 4pm, however, as protesters barged their way past police lines into the Legco building, police lost their patience. Some fired tear-gas canisters. Soon afterwards they fired rubber bullets and small bean-bags filled with birdshot. A running battle continued up and down the flyovers and roadways of the Admiralty district. Clouds of stinging gas could be felt blocks away. As hundreds of demonstrators fled in every direction, many took shelter in shopping malls and office buildings, scrambling over the makeshift barricades they had erected earlier in the day. Although they came prepared for trouble, protesters were surprised at the level of aggression shown by the police. Though nobody was killed, one young woman on the front line was moved to draw a comparison with the Chinese Communist Party’s massacre of protesters around Tiananmen Square 30 years ago—an event widely commemorated in Hong Kong last week. “We can’t believe that this kind of thing can happen in Hong Kong,” she said. “Citizens try to fight back but we have nothing.” After the police had cleared and sealed off the area around Legco, apparently taking group selfies to celebrate, protesters gathered in huge groups elsewhere, disrupting traffic. Office workers joined the throng. One demonstrator, Zoe, argued that “Most people here... their parents wouldn’t want them to be fighting with the police. But they choose to come anyway and fight for the democracy of Hong Kong.”
|
read more |
|
Xi Assailed on All Fronts as Hong Kong Adds to Trump Pressure @business Law & Politics |
For most of the last six years, Xi Jinping has been largely free to define the terms of his rule. But with challenges piling up from the U.S. trade war to mass protests in Hong Kong, his presidency is increasingly being dictated by events. This week alone, President Donald Trump threatened to hike tariffs if China’s leader fails to meet with him at the Group of 20 meeting in Japan; hundreds of thousands of protesters rallied against an extradition law in Hong Kong; and signs emerged that China’s economy is struggling, with manufacturing slipping and an 8.5% decline in imports indicating slowing domestic demand. Assailed on all sides, Xi’s travails amount to one of the most difficult periods to date of his six-year presidency. How he responds is a matter for business, finance and economies globally, since whichever course Xi takes could have far-reaching consequences for his legitimacy at home and his ability to assert China’s interests abroad. “This is all on Xi’s shoulders,” said Trey McArver, co-founder of Beijing-based research firm Trivium China. “Xi has personally said that he would handle relations with the United States and at this point he has failed. Those relations are spiraling out of control.” Xi’s current challenges are particularly acute as they strike at the heart of the Communist Party’s legitimacy. In Hong Kong, the protests met with tear gas and rubber bullets highlight the limits of the party’s ability to assert control over the formally autonomous island which became a Chinese special administrative region in 1997. In that worst-case scenario, “it would make it more difficult for President Xi to back down,” Kirkegaard told Bloomberg Television. “He would be seen as bowing to political pressure from President Trump, from the administration, which is very difficult for him given the standoff they’re already embroiled in over the trade relationship.” The dust-up in Hong Kong is just one of China’s peripheral headaches where the U.S. can play an aggravating role. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has accused the Communist Party of “methodically attempting to strangle Uighur culture and stamp out the Islamic faith” in its far western region of Xinjiang. The situation in Hong Kong looked calmer on Thursday, with police removing roadblocks and the Legislative Council scrapping debate for a second straight day of the extradition bill at the heart of the uproar. The U.S. has meanwhile ratcheted up support for Taiwan’s China-skeptic president, sailing warships through the Taiwan Strait while entertaining the island’s request for advanced F-16V fighter jets. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has decided to run against China as she seeks a second term, announcing Thursday that should won’t cooperate with Hong Kong’s extradition law. Chinese officials have been frank about the seriousness of Trump’s attacks. One senior Chinese diplomat recently told a foreign counterpart that Beijing sees the U.S. actions as a challenge to the Communist Party’s right to govern China, according to a person familiar with the exchange. What’s more, these are not the kinds of challenges that Chinese leaders are used to dealing with. In Hong Kong, Xi must deal with the unpredictability of a polity where relative freedom of assembly and expression are the norm. In Trump, Xi faces a U.S. president who announces major policy shifts on Twitter -- a platform blocked in China -- and courts an image of unpredictability to gain leverage in talks. In addition, Xi’s decision to remove presidential term limits last year means he has nowhere to pass the buck. If he backs down in the face of these pressures, he risks looking weak in front of the domestic audiences which handed him this authority. “Xi has grown overconfident in himself on dealing with domestic and international issues,” said Suisheng Zhao, director of the Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. While displaying great ambition, he’s neglected some issues which could come back to haunt him, said Zhao. “If he sticks to his current path, it will only become more challenging for him at home and abroad.”
|
read more |
|
Ex-PBOC Head Warns Trade War Could Trigger Competitive Devaluation @markets Law & Politics |
The U.S.- China trade war could trigger competitive currency devaluation across the globe and disrupt financial order, China’s former central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said on Friday. The global consensus of no competitive currency depreciation could be challenged if the dispute drags on, Zhou said at a major financial forum in Shanghai, adding that he hopes the upcoming Group of 20 meeting will help stabilize financial markets. The offshore yuan extended its drop after the comments by Zhou, who stepped down from the top job of China’s central bank last year. The offshore yuan has fallen 0.9% in 2019 as one of the worst performers in Asia amid escalating trade tensions with the U.S. The currency slipped 0.07% to 6.9341 a dollar as of 11:16 a.m. in Hong Kong. The world’s two biggest economies have imposed tariffs and threatened each other’s companies after the trade negotiations broke down last month. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to raise tariffs if Chinese President Xi Jinping doesn’t meet with him at the G-20 leaders’ meeting from June 28-29 in Osaka, Japan. Trump has said he has no deadline for China to return to trade talks that collapsed amid U.S. accusations that Beijing reneged on commitments in a tentative accord. Countries will take expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in an effort to offset the negative impact of the trade war, Zhou said. Those policies should be a temporary adjustment and won’t be "precise" enough to directly compensate exporters and importers. "We should seek a permanent cure," he said. "We should try to make trade policy return to the normal track through trade talks and WTO reforms." He also said China should tap other markets because its exports to the U.S. are set to fall as a result of the tensions. That could take about two to three years, and in the meantime China may suffer from export losses that could put pressure on the yuan, he said, without elaborating.
|
read more |
|
WHERE IS THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ? @AP. Law & Politics |
The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf. It is in the territorial waters of Iran and Oman, which at its narrowest point is just 33 kilometers (21 miles) wide. The width of the shipping lane in either direction is only 3 kilometers (2 miles). It flows into the Gulf of Oman, where ships can then travel to the rest of the world. The strait is viewed as an international transit route.
|
read more |
|
Weapons of mass disruption America is deploying a new economic arsenal to assert its power @TheEconomist Law & Politics |
When donald trump arrived in the Oval Office he promised to restore America’s might. His method has turned out to be a wholesale weaponisation of economic tools. The world can now see the awesome force that a superpower can project when it is unconstrained by rules or allies. On May 30th the president threatened crippling tariffs on Mexico after a row over migration. Markets reeled, and a Mexican delegation rushed to Washington to sue for peace. A day later preferential trading rules for India were cancelled. Its usually macho government did not put up a fight and promised to preserve “strong ties”. China faces a ratcheting up of tariffs soon, and its tech giant, Huawei, has been severed from its American suppliers. The country’s autocratic leaders are enraged, but on June 2nd they insisted they still seek “dialogue and consultation”. A tighter embargo on Iran, imposed over European objections, is strangling its economy. President Trump must view this scene with satisfaction. Nobody takes America for granted any more. Enemies and friends know that it is prepared to unleash an economic arsenal to protect its national interest. America is deploying new tactics—poker-style brinkmanship—and new weapons that exploit its role as the nerve centre of the global economy to block the free flow of goods, data, ideas and money across borders. This pumped-up vision of a 21st-century superpower may be seductive for some. But it could spark a crisis, and it is eroding America’s most valuable asset—its legitimacy. You might think that America’s clout comes from its 11 aircraft-carriers, 6,500 nuclear warheads or its anchor role in the imf. But it is also the central node in the network that underpins globalisation. This mesh of firms, ideas and standards reflects and magnifies American prowess. Though it includes goods traded through supply chains, it is mainly intangible. America controls or hosts over 50% of the world’s cross-border bandwidth, venture capital, phone-operating systems, top universities and fund-management assets. Some 88% of currency trades use greenbacks. Across the planet it is normal to use a Visa card, invoice exports in dollars, sleep beside a device with a Qualcomm chip, watch Netflix and work for a firm that BlackRock invests in. Foreigners accept all this because, on balance, it makes them better off. They may not set the rules of the game, but they get access to American markets and fair treatment alongside American firms. Globalisation and technology have made the network more powerful although America’s share of world gdp has fallen, from 38% in 1969 to 24% now. China cannot yet compete, even though its economy is approaching America’s in size. Despite this, Mr Trump and his advisers are convinced that the world order is rigged against America, pointing to its rust-belt and its trade deficit. And rather than mimic the relatively restrained tactics of the last trade conflict, with Japan in the 1980s, they have redefined how economic nationalism works. First, instead of using tariffs as a tool to extract specific economic concessions, they are being continuously deployed to create a climate of instability with America’s trading partners. The objective of the new Mexican tariffs—fewer migrants crossing the Rio Grande—has nothing to do with trade. And they breach the spirit of usmca, a free-trade deal signed by the White House only six months ago, which will replace nafta (Congress has yet to ratify it). Alongside these big fights is a constant barrage of petty activity. Officials have skirmished over foreign washing machines and Canadian softwood lumber imports. Second, the scope of activity has been extended beyond physical goods by weaponising America’s network. Outright enemies such as Iran and Venezuela face tighter sanctions—last year 1,500 people, firms and vessels were added to the list, a record figure. The rest of the world faces a new regime for tech and finance. An executive order prohibits transactions in semiconductors and software made by foreign adversaries, and a law passed last year known as firrma polices foreign investment into Silicon Valley. If a firm is blacklisted, banks usually refuse to deal with it, cutting it off from the dollar payments system. That is crippling—as two firms, zte and Rusal, discovered, briefly, last year. Such tools used to be reserved for times of war: the legal techniques used for surveillance of the payments system were developed to hunt al-Qaeda. Now a “national emergency” has been declared in tech. Officials have discretion to define what is a threat. Though they often clobber specific firms, such as Huawei, others are running scared (see article). If you run a global company, are you sure your Chinese clients are not about to be blacklisted? The damage to America’s economy so far has been deceptively small. Tariffs cause agony in export hubs such as northern Mexico, but even if Mr Trump imposes all his threatened tariffs, the tax on imports would be worth only about 1% of America’s gdp. His poll ratings at home have held up, even as they have slumped abroad. His officials believe the experiment in weaponising America’s economic network has only just begun. In fact, the bill is mounting. America could have built a global coalition to press China to reform its economy, but it has now squandered precious goodwill. Allies looking for new trade deals with America, including post-Brexit Britain, will worry that a presidential tweet could scupper it after it has been signed. Retaliation in kind has begun. China has begun its own blacklist of foreign firms. And the risk of a clumsy mistake that triggers a financial panic is high. Imagine if America banned the $1trn of Chinese shares trading in New York, or cut off foreign banks. In the long run the American-led network is under threat. There are hints of mutiny—of America’s 35 European and Asian military allies, only three have so far agreed to ban Huawei. Efforts to build a rival global infrastructure will accelerate. China is creating its own courts to adjudicate commercial disputes with foreigners (see Chaguan). Europe is experimenting with building a new payments system to get round the Iran sanctions, which could in time be used elsewhere. China, and eventually India, will be keen to end their dependence on semiconductors from Silicon Valley. Mr Trump is right that America’s network gives it vast power. It will take decades, and cost a fortune, to replace it. But if you abuse it, ultimately you will lose it.◼
|
read more |
|
05-DEC-2016:: hindsight will surely show that Russia ran a seriously sophisticated programme of interference, mostly digital. 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.
|
read more |
|
@AlibabaGroup's Hong Kong Share Offering Should Worry U.S. Markets @BW Law & Politics |
Alibaba’s $25 billion debut on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 was, at the time, the largest-ever initial public offering in the U.S. Now that the company is said to be planning to raise $20 billion from a secondary stock offering in Hong Kong, the operators of America’s top exchanges should be worried that business from China will start to dry up. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. isn’t deserting New York, which will remain its primary listing. But its plan to add one in Hong Kong signals to other Chinese companies that they have IPO options closer to home, people familiar with the matter have said. Businesses without a three-year track record of profitability are still prohibited from listing on Chinese exchanges. But a soon-to-be-launched market in Shanghai will allow money-losing tech plays to be listed, and in April 2018, Hong Kong changed its regulations to allow unprofitable tech companies to list in the city. It also scrapped a strict one-share-one-vote rule for tech stocks, leading to mega-IPOs by Chinese smartphone operator Xiaomi Corp., which raised $5.4 billion in July, and food-delivery giant Meituan Dianping, which raised $4.2 billion ahead of its debut in September. The issues helped propel Hong Kong to become the world’s top IPO venue last year.
|
read more |
|
India is facing a surge in onion prices. It must release the onion options. Let loose the shallot swaps @wsj via @birdyword Commodities |
The cost of onions is causing tears in India. An onion futures market, which would damp volatility in the price of the aromatic bulb, might help dry them.
The price of onions has surged in India during the past month, leading the government to withdraw export incentives on Tuesday to keep more of the vegetable in the domestic market. As recently as the beginning of the year, the problem facing India was low onion prices, which were pinching farmers’ incomes. Volatile prices reach consumers immediately because there are no derivatives with which farmers can hedge themselves.
In the U.S., that’s because of a highly unusual piece of legislation: the 1958 Onion Futures Act, which was passed after two traders cornered the market in physical onions and onion-futures contracts listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Onions are still the only agricultural commodity in which the U.S. bans futures trading.
India can do better than the U.S. Unleash the onion options, deploy the shallot swaps, and let the market do its job
|
read more |
|
@FitchRatings warns Africa risks falling back into financial 'distress' Africa |
Sub-Saharan African states have borrowed so much money since the debt forgiveness programmes earlier this century that they risk falling back into financial distress, Fitch warned today. However, the rating agency argued that multilateral debt relief had not been squandered, as some have argued, because it has “delivered lasting benefits” in the form of faster economic growth and improvements in measures of human development. Between 2001 and 2015, 36 states, all but six in Africa, had $76bn of debt wiped off as part of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiatives. And although some poorly-run countries wasted this windfall, Ed Parker, head of Emea sovereign ratings at Fitch, said “median GDP growth, total investment-to-GDP and countries’ percentile ranking in the UN’s Human Development Index all improved for Fitch-rated sub-Saharan sovereigns after they passed the HIPC completion point relative to pre-HIPC, and also improved relative to sovereigns that have not benefited from the HIPC initiative”. The median public debt-to-GDP ratio of the 19 sub-Saharan countries rated by Fitch plummeted to just 26.7 per cent in 2012, as a result of the wave of debt forgiveness. However, it has since rebounded to 54.3 per cent The stock of public debt has jumped to 128 per cent of GDP in Cape Verde, 100 per cent in the Republic of Congo and 94 per cent in Mozambique, with the latter pair having already defaulted in recent years. “There is now limited scope to accumulate non-concessional public debt at such a rapid pace without an increasing risk of debt distress,” said Fitch, which has cut its average sub-Saharan sovereign credit rating from BB- to B+ since 2012, with downgrades outnumbering upgrades by three to one over the period. “Debt relief was, or was intended to be, a one-off event,” Mr Parker said. “Once the impact is used up then countries cannot continue to accumulate debt at the pace they have in the past. It does leave them with hard choices.” Gregory Smith, fixed-income strategist at Renaissance Capital, said sub-Saharan sovereign debt was now increasing at a faster clip than in other emerging or frontier markets, and the growing importance of non-Paris Club creditors such as China and India complicated efforts to deal with any necessary restructurings. “I’m travelling to the Paris Club on Monday to talk about three African sovereigns and whatever we do [about potential future debt restructuring] we are going to have to try to change the global infrastructure,” Mr Smith said, although he did point to the example of Iraq, where China agreed to accept the same haircut as the Paris Club. From the point of view of eurobond holders, however, Mr Smith said while idiosyncratic problems were likely, he did not expect to see any asset class-wide problems until 2024-25, when a wall of debt maturities is due to hit. “Nobody expects this debt to be repaid. They expect [African sovereigns] to take out more debt and kick the can down the road, but that depends on the markets being open then,” he said.
|
read more |
|
Chinese Loans to Africa Africa |
Although there are no official data on Chinese lending, the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University estimates that Beijing lent $143bn to African states between 2000 and 2017, illustrated in the third chart, although the stock is likely to be lower due to repayments and restructurings.
|
read more |
|
Ethiopia Approves Law to Open Telecoms to Foreign Investors Africa |
Ethiopia’s parliament approved a draft law that enables foreign companies to invest in the telecommunications industry of Africa’s second-most populous nation. The legislation establishes an independent communications regulator, accountable to the prime minister, that will be responsible for promoting competition. Lawmakers Thursday “approved into law the Ethiopian Communication Regulatory Proclamation,” Innovation and Technology Minister Getahun Mekuria said in a tweet. “This is a huge step in reforming the telecom sector.” Ethiopia offers a rare opportunity for foreign investors to access one of the continent’s biggest markets. With one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies and more than 100 million people, it’s coveted by firms including MTN Group Ltd. and Vodacom Group Ltd., the continent’s largest mobile-phone companies.
|
read more |
|
Sudan's air force chief insists army prepared to hand over power @FT @thomas_m_wilson Africa |
A leading member of Sudan’s ruling military council has said the army is prepared to eventually hand over power to civilians but will continue to rule the country until elections are held.In the first interview by a council member to western media since Sudanese troops raided a pro-democracy sit-in last week, leaving more than 100 people dead, Lieutenant General Salah Abdel Khalig insisted the seven-man military junta wanted a return to civilian government once national security had been guaranteed. “We do not want to rule Sudan forever, a few months and we will go home,” Lt Gen Khalig, head of the air force, told the Financial Times from the presidential palace in the capital Khartoum. The military would even invite the UN to run the vote, he added, but for reasons of national security the army must remain in charge until then. The military seized power in April, ousting long-serving president Omar al-Bashir after four months of anti-government protests. Initially welcomed as liberators, talks between the transitional military council and protest movement leaders broke down over the structure of an interim government, before security forces turned their guns on the people last week. International mediators, including US diplomat Tibor Nagy, who arrived in Sudan on Wednesday, and Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed, are seeking to rebuild trust between the two sides. To allow mediation efforts to progress, the civilian opposition ended a general strike on Wednesday and the transitional military council agreed to release political prisoners. But Lt Gen Khalig played down the chance of a breakthrough. “I feel these negotiations will not go well. They behave like kids — they are not behaving like adult politicians,” he said of the protest leaders who he believes are unwilling to compromise. Civilians can participate in interim institutions but executive authority must remain with the military as a protection against rebel activity and a revival of the Islamist groups that shared power with the army under Mr Bashir, Lt Gen Khalig said. “We are assuring that the Islamic system will not take power again because it brought us a lot of sanctions, a lot of the problems with the free world,” he said. Given the military's close involvement in Sudan’s politics over 50 years, most activists are suspicious and believe the army has no interest in handing over control and wants continued access to power to protect its interests. In Sudan, army officer Gaafar Nimeiry took power in 1969 after seizing control in a military coup, only to be toppled by his own soldiers in 1985. Elections were held a year later but the military took control again in 1989 through Mr Bashir. For Lt Gen Khalig’s military council, there are concerns that a civilian-led interim government would look to investigate and prosecute officers that ruled alongside Mr Bashir. The opposition has also demanded an international investigation into last week’s killings before talks can restart. The military council has said it is conducting its own inquiry, which the opposition has decried as a charade. Recounting that investigation’s version of events, Lt Gen Khalig denied the military council ordered members of the feared Rapid Support Forces to attack the sit-in, as alleged by the opposition and many victims. The police, supported by a mixed group of army and RSF soldiers, had intended to clear just one section of the sit-in where alleged criminal activity was taking place, he said. Some of those forces and others, who have since been arrested, then attacked the sit-in against the wishes of the army’s senior leadership, he added. His own son, a 28-year-old commercial airline pilot, often visited the sit-in and could have been killed had he been there on the night of the attack, he pointed out. Lt Gen Khalig also said the military filmed the operation using a reconnaissance aircraft, generating footage that would be integral to any international investigation, though such a probe may never take place. “Sometimes international interference in things like this can make the situation more complicated because they may also have an agenda,” he said. “For me personally, I am ready if they come, but the council will take this decision as a group.”
|
read more |
|
And now we have two visions of the Future Africa |
And now we have two visions of the Future. One Vision played out on our screens, the Protestors could have been our Wives, our Children, our Daughters and Sons. The Other Vision is that of MBS, MBZ and Al-Sisi and its red in tooth and claw. Vladimir and Xi backed the Gulf and America is below the radar.
Hugh Masakela said ''I want to be there when the People start to turn it around'' Sudan is a Masakela Pivot moment
|
read more |
|
Lets start in Khartoum. The "zeitgeist" of the Revolution was as intoxicating as the Oudh that the Saudi Arabian Ambassador once gave me and I found myself semi delirious intoxicated on my own perfume. Africa |
The exquisite murals, the composition of the crowds, the element of Girl Power which spoke to hope and a Future. As I watched events unfold it felt like Sudan was a Portal into a whole new another Normal. David Pilling in the Financial Times captured the Essence by quoting William Wordsworth, who wrote of the French Revolution:
OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we who were strong in love! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!-- Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us,--the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all!
|
read more |
|
@IMFNews approves disbursement of $248.15 mln under Angola's credit facility @ReutersAfrica Africa |
The International Monetary Fund said its board had completed the first review under Angola’s extended arrangement and approved a disbursement of $248.15 million, taking the total of such payments to about $1.24 billion. “The Angolan authorities have demonstrated strong commitment to policies under the Fund-supported program,” the IMF’s first deputy managing director and acting chair, David Lipton, said in a statement. “However, a weakened external environment, notably the heightened volatility in the international price of crude oil, is posing challenges to their reform efforts.”
|
read more |
|
Kenya Budget Highlights 2019/20 Unravelling the Puzzle #BudgetKE2019 | @lkubebea @JWEshun @DeloitteKenya Kenyan Economy |
The rate of Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is set to be increased from 5% to 12.5%. Reduction of the withholding VAT rate from 6% to 2%. Introduction of excise duty on betting activities at 10% of amounts staked. • Reduction of excise duty on fully-powered electric motor vehicles from 20% to 10%. • Increase in excise duty on motor vehicles of engine capacity exceeding 1500cc to 25%. ICT sector output grew by an average of 10.8% between 2014 and 2018, mainly on account of continued investments in mobile telephony, Interest rates cap to be removed: proposal to repeal section 33B of the Banking Act in a bid unlock credit to the private sector
|
read more |
|
|
|
|