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Browsing: debt
Ghana’s case specifically plays out with the dramatic effect consistent with a Shakespearean tragedy. The west African nation ironically is a darling of the West in terms of foreign direct investment. Yet, its debt levels have breached what multilateral institutions consider to be sustainable. A painful irony in the case of Ghana is that it was offered the opportunity to renegotiate the terms of its debts through the World Bank’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative. However, Ghana did not elect to participate.
A second painful irony is that Ghana, this time around, does not owe most of its debts to multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. It owes the bulk of its debt to private lenders like the world’s largest asset manager Black Rock, and its has expressed that it has no interest in renegotiating the terms of Ghana’s sovereign debt.
If Ghana had borrowed from …
When commodity prices began to soften in later years it seemed more of a blunder to have diversified the metals portfolio of the business than it appears a stroke of genius today.
With softening metal prices came the need to conserve cash and so dividend flows dried up. The company did not cease its expansion plans going so far as to pile on large amounts of United States dollar-denominated debt purchasing US-based platinum miner Stillwater and swallowed up Lonmin in the process. The share price then cratered when news broke that the company had experienced fatalities at its South African mines. In some circles of the investment community, others joked that they would not invest in Sibanye Stillwater as a matter of moral principle.
The share price went down reaching an all-time low of around R 7.…
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) which has so far lent about $491.5 million to Uganda said that it is a misconception to assume that Uganda’s debt is unsustainable.
Uganda’s public debt levels are within a manageable threshold in the long term, noted Izabela Karpowicz the IMF Resident Representative for Uganda.
“We used to rate Uganda at low risk and now it will be moving to medium risk and this is due to Covid-19. It is not correct to say the debt is not sustainable over the medium and long term.” Ms Karpowicz said on the sidelines of a policy dialogue on Uganda’s economy, which was organised by the Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG) and the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE).
She noted that how resources that are being borrowed now and in the future will be deployed productively should be what Ugandans should be worried about and …
State power utility Eskom reported a loss amounting to ZAR 20.5 billion ($1.2bil) for the financial year 2020. The power producers generated revenue to the tune of R200billion($12.3bil) which failed to match up to the previous year’s revenue by 1.29%. The poor results were attributed to challenges in capacity and untenable economic climate.
The major contributing factor to the huge loss position can be traced to finance costs which came up at ZAR 31.3billion ($1.9bil). The costs in question were related to servicing a debt of ZAR 483 billion($25bil) which the company is struggling to reduce.
The heavy debt position for Eskom is particularly distressing for South Africa as the South African government is the largest guarantor for Eskom’s debt. Eskom has also been a recipient of government bailout funding set at ZAR138 billion($8.4bil) until 2022. This heavily places a burden on the country’s budget and is a significant threat …
When something grows by 50 percent, we say it has doubled, when it grows by 100 percent, it has quadrupled and so on and so forth. You want to know by how much telecommunication companies in Rwanda have grown during the onslaught of the coronavirus? I will tell you, an amazing 450 percent.
According to the Rwanda Utilities Regulation Authority, between January and April alone, telecom companies in Rwanda have amassed over USD 42 million that is an average of USD 10 million a month.
This impressive performance is representative of a drastic paradigm shift, the migration from a pre-dominantly cash based society to one that has gone almost absolutely cashless. Rwanda has in the fight against the spread of coronavirus gone cashless, switching from use of cash payments to digital platforms via mobile money transfers.
Last month, The Exchange published an article titled Digital Africa in which it was …