Risks Archives - African Financial & Economic Data

23 Feb

Ghana Risks the Anger of 800,000 Cocoa Farmers

The government of President Nana Akufo-Addo in Ghana will struggle to sidestep one of its most difficult decisions since coming to power a year ago: telling a crucial constituency to accept a pay cut.

The New Patriotic Party-led government has little choice but to end subsidies for its 800,000 farmers that will likely cost almost $450 million this season.

Ghana Cocoa Board, the industry regulator in the world’s second-biggest producer, is running out of cash with few options for funding left other than to sell short-term debt to local investors at rates as high as 22 percent.

Justifying a decision to end the support will be tricky. The NPP swept to power in the December 2016 polls after pledging to invest in farms and increase prices.

Farmers are unimpressed with the prospect of the government going back on its promises even though international prices have slumped by more than a third since the middle of 2016.

“If the government cannot afford to pay for its own loose talking, then it must borrow,” said Michael Acheampong, 37, a cocoa farmer in Kwabeng, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of the capital, Accra. “To announce a cut after promising to help us is a sacrilegious crime. We will not accept that.”

Ghana has little room to support prices even if rising output from new oil fields are supporting an economic revival.

While the World Bank forecasts that the economy will expand by 8.3 percent in 2018, the fastest rate in Africa, the country remains bound by conditions for disciplined spending that are attached to an almost $1 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund, agreed to in April 2015.

Ghana Cocoa Board is losing the equivalent of about $600 for every metric ton of the 850,000 tons that it plans to purchase this season until September, the regulator said earlier this month.

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22 Feb

Crackdown on Dissent Puts Kenya’s Democratic Status at Risk

Once considered an island of stability in a neighbourhood bedevilled by conflict and one-party rule, Kenya is mired in a protracted electoral dispute that’s undermining its democratic credentials.

Political tensions have been simmering in the East African nation since opposition leader Raila Odinga boycotted a rerun of a presidential vote in October and rejected the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner.

They flared again when Odinga declared himself the so-called people’s president last month, and the authorities cut off TV stations airing the ceremony, initially ignored a court order to restore broadcasts and deported a prominent opposition lawyer.

The dispute has weighed on Kenya’s economy, the region’s largest, with growth slowing to an estimated 4.8 percent last year from 5.8 percent a year earlier.

That may undermine efforts to create jobs for more than a third of the potential workforce who are unemployed.

While the opposition drew criticism for failing to see the electoral process through, the government response has raised concerns about Kenyatta’s commitment to the rule of law.

“Nobody was expecting him to go to such lengths to keep fighting political battles,” said Christopher Dielmann, senior economist at Exotix Capital. “This is not an electoral blip. It calls into question the political and constitutional structure of Kenya.”

The world’s largest shipper of black tea and a regional hub for companies including Alphabet Inc. and Coca-Cola Co., Kenya emerged from one-party rule in 1992, with three presidents chosen in regular — though often-disputed and sometimes violent — elections.

The press is mostly free and the judiciary set an African precedent when it declared the initial August vote void after claims it was rigged.

The Interior Ministry denied there’s been any crackdown on political opponents. The government is “becoming more disciplined and focused on ensuring that discipline is followed,” spokesman Mwenda Njoka said by phone. He accused the opposition of “using extra-legal means to sabotage the government.”

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19 Jan

South Africa Holds Rate as Rand, Inflation Risks Persist

The South African Reserve Bank kept its benchmark lending rate unchanged for a third consecutive meeting as the risks of a credit-rating downgrade persist, muddying the outlook for the rand and inflation.

The central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee maintained the repurchase rate at 6.75 percent Thursday, in line with the estimates by all but seven of the 20 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

The bank cut the rate for the first time in five years in July to support an economy that entered its second recession in almost a decade in the first quarter of 2017 and has struggled to mount a strong recovery.

Inflation has been inside the target band for eight months and the rand — among the world’s most-volatile currencies — has strengthened since the ruling party elected Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa as its new leader in December, spurring hope that policy uncertainty and political turbulence will dissipate.

“We do see an improved inflation and growth outlook thanks to a stronger performance in the currency but a lot of risk factors still exist, both on the political front as well as on the credit-ratings front,” said Jeffrey Schultz, BNP Paribas’s senior economist.

S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings Ltd. cut the country’s debt to junk in 2017, and a reduction of rand bonds by Moody’s Investors Service could trigger an exclusion of the country’s rand debt from Citigroup Inc.’s World Government Bond Index.

The effect of this on rand bond yields “could be significant, but the extent to which a universal downgrade is already priced in remains unclear,” Governor Lesetja Kganyago told reporters in the capital, Pretoria. The government’s challenge is to “find ways to finance the deficit in a growth-positive manner, and at the same time convey a credible commitment to structural reforms.”

The bank expects inflation to remain within the target band of 3 percent to 6 percent until at least the end of 2019, reaching a low of 4.4 percent in the first quarter of this year.

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07 Dec

Kenya Growth Outlook Cut by World Bank Over Credit, Spending

The World Bank lowered its economic growth forecasts for Kenya as delays in spending cuts, weak credit extension and political uncertainty curb expansion prospects.

East Africa’s biggest economy may grow 4.9 percent this year, the slowest pace since 2011, the Washington-based lender said in a report released Thursday. That compares with an April forecast of 5.5 percent, slower than last year’s gross domestic product expansion of 5.8 percent.

A government-imposed cap on commercial lending rates, a drought and two disputed elections have weighed on growth this year in the world’s largest black-tea exporter. The Treasury had to increase its budget-deficit forecast for the year through June and is looking to return to international debt markets for a possible $2 billion Eurobond sale to try to plug the fiscal gap.

“There is a need to consolidate the fiscal stance in order not to jeopardize Kenya’s hard-earned macroeconomic stability,” the World Bank said. Kenya must also “jump-start the recovery of credit growth to the private sector” and should “mitigate weather-related risks by climate-proofing agriculture” to support growth, it said.

The bank reduced the 2018 growth forecast to 5.5 percent from 5.8 percent in April, and cut the estimate for 2019 to 5.9 percent from 6.1 percent, it said.

‘Downside Risks’

Despite the downgraded forecasts, the World Bank’s forecasts may still be too bullish given the series of obstacles the economy faces including the rate caps and new accounting rules for banks, said Jared Osoro, director of research at the Kenya Bankers Association.

“There are a number of downside risks that have been identified, which if taken into consideration will put into question the bullish outlook,” he said.

Public debt has burgeoned to about 57 percent of GDP, from about 45 percent eight years earlier. The Treasury sees the budget deficit at 8.5 percent of GDP by June 30, unchanged from a year earlier. It previously said the gap would narrow to 6.8 percent.

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