Banking | - Part 71

Uganda Keeps Key Rate at Record Low But Sees Prices Rising

KAMPALA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Uganda’s central bank maintained its key interest rate at a record low but warned that inflation is set to accelerate from a 3 1/2-year low. The Monetary Policy Committee kept the benchmark rate at 9 percent, GovernorEmmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile told reporters Monday in the capital, Kampala. Growth in consumer prices slowed to 1.7 percent in May, the weakest level since 2014, and the risks to the inflation outlook in Africa’s biggest coffee exporter…

Ghana to Buy Contracts to Protect It From High Oil Prices

Posted on by The Editorial Team

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghana will buy contracts to protect it from higher oil-product prices in the third quarter as the West African nation seeks to curb volatility in what consumers pay at the pump amid rising costs of the fuel in international markets. The government is putting together a risk-management program to go to the market “in a month or two” for options on crude, with the strike price yet to be…

Nigerian Banks’s Capital ratio at 3.4% under high stress scenario

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Moody’s Investors Service conducted a scenario analysis to measure the solvency of Nigerian banks under a base-case scenario and an alternative stress scenario during the 2018-19 period. It noted that the base-case scenario reflects its current macroeconomic forecasts for Nigeria, while the stress scenario measures the banks’ capacity to withstand high stress conditions and includes a set of assumptions for loan and asset growth and income reductions, among other…

South Africa Central Bank Sees Cryptos as Tokens, Not Currency

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s central bank chooses to call digital currencies such as Bitcoin “cyber-tokens” because they don’t meet the requirements to be classified as money. “We don’t use the term ‘cryptocurrency’ because it doesn’t meet the requirements of money in the economic sense of the stable means of exchange, a unit of measure and a stable unit of value,” Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Francois Groepe told reporters in Pretoria on Thursday….

Signs Say Yes for South African Bond Sales But Issuers Say No

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – With emerging-market credit spreads near their best levels in more than a decade, 2018 should’ve been the year to borrow. Yet bond sales by South African banks, insurers and property companies are headed for a five-year low. Not everyone is missing the boat. Capitec Bank Holdings Ltd., the country’s fastest-growing major lender, last week sold 500 million rand ($40 million) of three-year floating-rate notes at 153 basis points above the quarterly three-month Johannesburg…

Kenya’s Top Buyer of Banks Is Now Looking Ahead to Profits

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NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – SBM Holdings Ltd., the Mauritius lender that bought two Kenyan banks within months of each other, expects the combined operations to make a profit within a year. The second-biggest lender in the Indian Ocean island-nation is expanding in East Africa’s largest economy to use it as a hub for the rest of the region as part of a broader strategy funded by debt to add assets in its home…

Ghana Cuts Interest Rate to 4-Year Low as Inflation Slows

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ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghana cut its benchmark interest rate to the lowest in more than four years as the inflation rate fell within the regulator’s target band for the first time since 2013. The Bank of Ghana reduced the rate by 100 basis points to 17 percent, Governor Ernest Addison told reporters Monday in the capital, Accra. Lower borrowing costs may boost expansion in one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies. Inflation at 9.6 percent in April was…

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