Africa to see robust growth, needs more inclusion: AfDB
LONDON (Reuters) – Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to show robust 5.8 percent growth this year, with domestic demand playing a key role, but business must do more to promote a more inclusive society, the African Development Bank said on Monday.
“We are looking at growth of around 5.8 percent this year in sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa it would be 6.2 percent,” AfDB president Donald Kaberuka told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a business briefing.
Treasuries threat to emerging markets
Emerging market issuers have been busy this year, but investors aren’t getting much of a return, as rising Treasury yields steal their lunch.
Joyce Chang, head of emerging markets research at JP Morgan, told the Emerging Market Traders’ Association yesterday that:
Africa investment boom sees beyond conflict-driven headlines
LONDON, Feb 25 (Reuters) – Turmoil in Tunisia? Conflict in
Mali? Fraught elections in Kenya? Investment in Africa is
thriving regardless.
African investment funds have grown nearly five times in
value in the past six years and are attracting new forms of
capital, from local pension money to sovereign wealth funds.
Emerging Policy: Turkey bakes
Turkey took another step in the currency battle this week, cutting two of its three main interest rates to prevent speculative flows, yet also raising reserve requirements to cool domestic loan growth.
Policymakers in both the emerging and the developed worlds have been keeping monetary policy loose to stop their currencies rising to uncompetitive levels, even though G20 finance ministers last weekend said there would be no currency war, and made a commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations. The mood does appear to be softening, with the Fed’s minutes yesterday showing a number of officials think the central bank might have to slow or stop buying bonds.
London’s yuan push stirs hopes of Eurodollar-style boom
LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) – A Bank of England pledge to help
London become a global trading centre for China’s yuan has
stirred talk of a revival in the city’s fortunes, similar to the
explosion of the U.S. dollar market in the 1960s and 70s.
In what many bankers saw as a pivotal move, the British
central bank said last month it was ready “in principle” to
adopt a currency swap line with the People’s Bank of China,
providing a two-way pipe to the City as the still-unconvertible
yuan starts to emerge as a world reserve
currency.
From cycles to cell phones: tracking Africa’s middle classes
Mobile phone bills and beer consumption patterns are used by investors to assess how fast bank accounts are likely to grow in Africa, but what did investors count to gauge trends before there were mobile phones?
The answer? Cattle, bicycles, radios, founder of Zimbabwean telecoms company Econet Wireless Strive Masiyiwa told an Economist conference on Africa this afternoon. Masiyiwa said he researched ownership of these status items to assess the five-year demand for mobile phones in Botswana when he successfully bid for a mobile phone contract from Botswana’s government.
From booze to bulldozers, analysts scour for emerging market data
LONDON (Reuters) – From phone bills in Lagos to bulldozers in Beijing, analysts are looking creatively at ways to measure the strength of emerging market economies where official data sometimes comes up short.
How much Guinness are Nigerians drinking? How full are hotels in the Gulf? What about enrolment in international schools?
Banks won’t lend? Try a bond instead
When the banks won’t lend you money, head for the international debt markets.
Western European banks have been withdrawing funds from emerging Europe because of capital issues at home for the past few years, alarming international lenders so much that they formed the Vienna Initiative to help the region.
Chidambaram says too early to talk of FX war; welcomes RBI move
LONDON (Reuters) – It is too early to say that Japan’s aggressive recent moves to weaken the yen constitute a currency war but countries must resist falling into the trap of competitive devaluations, finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.
Speaking to Reuters Television on Tuesday, Chidambaram said: “It’s still early to call this a currency war, only Japan has depreciated its currency, what choice does Japan have? They have to get growth up, they cannot continue with zero growth any longer.”
Chidambaram says too early to talk of FX war
LONDON (Reuters) – It is too early to say that Japan’s aggressive recent moves to weaken the yen constitute a currency war but countries must resist falling into the trap of competitive devaluations, finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.
Speaking to Reuters Television on Tuesday, Chidambaram said: “It’s still early to call this a currency war, only Japan has depreciated its currency, what choice does Japan have? They have to get growth up, they cannot continue with zero growth any longer.”
-
About Carolyn
-
Follow Carolyn
