Finance

LUANDA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Angola, Africa’s second-biggest oil producer, is in talks with some of its crude-importing partners to reprofile its debt and has joined a separate initiative to negotiate the suspension of bilateral debt payments. The move will help Angola tackle the pressures caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the recent drop in oil prices and production cuts agreed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Angola’s government debt is set to…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Efforts to reduce the debt burden of African nations continued this week with private creditors offering a blueprint for contributing and the Paris Club of official lenders signing off on a payment halt for a sixth country. Private investors said they may offer low-income countries cash to offset debt payments due this year, a mechanism that could avoid triggering default. The plan was put forward by the Institute of International Finance,…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) — A quarter of firms using the U.K. government’s furloughing plan can’t afford to take on any of the cost of paying their workers, the Institute of Directors think tank says. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has promised to announce details of how he plans to taper the program — which is currently paying 80% of the wages for 8.4 million jobs — this week. The changes are set to allow…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) — An hour into his grilling on a video call with Parliament’s most senior interrogators, Prime Minister Boris Johnson broke into a fit of coughing. It was a brief reminder that he had been through worse times in recent weeks, surviving a severe bout of Covid-19 that had put him in intensive care. Yet the current row over claims that his closest aide flouted the government’s own lockdown orders may still…

LUSAKA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Zambia appointed Lazard Freres as financial adviser to help it restructure its external debt, the Finance Ministry said. The contract is worth $5 million and will last three years, the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. “The government has no intention of unilaterally restructuring debt without consulting creditors,” Treasury Secretary Fredson Yamba said in the statement. “We will respect agreements and diligently use market-based instruments in our debt…

ABIDJAN (Capital Markets in Africa) — The African Development Bank’s board decided the lender should order a new independent probe of its president, Akinwumi Adesina, after U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected an internal investigation that cleared him of allegations of favoritism, according to two people familiar with the board’s deliberations on the matter. Africa’s largest multilateral lender agreed to the inquiry after several foreign governments backed the Treasury’s criticism of a bank-led examination into…