Economy

LUSAKA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Zambia’s move this month to further subsidize fuel prices highlights the government’s balancing act of seeking to retain power while convincing the International Monetary Fund to approve a bailout before an election scheduled for August. The finance ministry removed a 16% value-added tax on gasoline and diesel prices from Jan. 1, which it said was necessary to avoid increases at the pump. The IMF opposes subsidies and that could…

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Ghana’s economy contracted for a second straight quarter in the three months through September, even as the government eased restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Gross domestic product declined 1.1% in the third quarter from a year earlier, government statistician Samuel Kobina Annim told reporters Wednesday in the capital, Accra. That compares with a contraction of 3.2% in the second quarter. The data may put…

GABON (Capital Markets in Africa): Moody’s Investors Service (“Moody’s”) has today affirmed the Government of Gabon’s Caa1 long-term issuer ratings and changed the outlook to stable from positive. The rating on Gabon’s foreign currency senior unsecured debt has also been affirmed at Caa1. The key driver for the outlook change to stable is Gabon’s more limited institutional improvements than previously seemed possible, combined with rising liquidity pressures from the coronavirus crisis and associated oil price…

LAGOS (Capital ) — Sub-Saharan African economies face a slow recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and the region’s economic growth will fall behind the rest of the world next year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Gross domestic product in the region is projected to expand 3.1% next year, compared with a forecast of 5.2% for the world economy. This partly reflects sub-Saharan Africa’s relatively limited space for fiscal expansion, the Washington-based lender said in…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) — Kenya’s economy contracted for the first time in almost 12 years in the second quarter as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic battered key sectors. Gross domestic product fell 5.7%, compared with growth of 4.9% in the three months through March and expansion of 5.3% in the same period a year earlier, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday on its website. The median of six economists’ estimates…

JOHANNESBURG (Bloomberg) — South Africa won’t be able to meet its finance ministry’s debt targets and it may be undesirable for it to attempt to do so when the economy is being battered by the fallout from the coronavirus, according to an advisory panel appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa. In a more than 100-page document advising the government on an economic recovery program that Ramaphosa is due to unveil on Oct. 15, the President’s Economic…