Story of the Day:
It has been some time since the Honorable Ministry of Finance meet the press, business community and cooperating partners to give an update on the economic outlook of Zambia. The wait is finally over, according to Chileshe Kandeka, Ministry of Finance’s Chief Spokesperson in a Whatsapp message to the Founder of Financial Insight on 10th February 2020. Read more
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According to the full year 2019 prudential results for the entire banking industry, aggregate profitability grew 25.7% to K1.67billion with the after tax earnings skew housing 93.3% of PAT in 7 commercial banks. Read more: The Business Telegraph
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) targets to raise production of over 200 million small-scale producers in member countries with a proposed US$30 billion investment in the next 10 years. Read more: Zambia Daily Mail
Cavmont Bank has partnered with a Norwegian fintech company, SPENN, to launch a mobile money application to help bridge the unbanked gap through enhancing access to financial services.
SPENN is a global mobile banking application developed by Blockbonds AS, a Norwegian fintech company. Read more: Zambia Daily Mail
Copper mines in Zambia will have continuous electricity even if a supply deal lapses next month with no agreement to replace it, Energy Minister Matthew Nkhuwa said. Read more: Lusaka Times
Mopani Copper Mines Plc has disputed media reports suggesting that the mining giant plans to move its procurement offices to South Africa. Last week, local contractors and mine suppliers staged a protest demanding that Mopani rescinds its decision to move the procurement office to South Africa. Read more: Zambia Reports
KPMG Featured Article
Human intelligence has been influenced by emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Blockchain, Cloud Computing and Connected devices as in the Internet of Things (IoT). We can now operate like one global village enabled by the one big engine; technology. The paradigm shift has also affected major auditing firms and businesses at large. Read more
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The sound of a US$4 billion loss to the African continent because of China’s coronavirus outbreak is sobering, but that’s the estimate from one expert report that warns of financial losses if 2019 CoV continues to spread – and those losses are possible even without a single case ever being confirmed in African nations. Read more: Africa Times
The UK economy saw no growth in the final three months of 2019, as manufacturing contracted for the third quarter in a row and the service sector slowed around the time of the election. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the car industry had seen a particularly weak quarter. The ONS figures also showed the economy grew by 1.4% in 2019, marginally higher than the 1.3% rate in 2018. Read more: ZNBC
Concerned that big tech companies are unfairly engaging in potential anti-competitive behavior, the Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday it ordered Alphabet Inc’s Google unit, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Microsoft Corp to provide information on mergers that were too small to report to antitrust regulators. Read more: Reuters
South Africa’s unemployment rate remained unchanged at 29.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019, while the country’s manufacturing output declined 5.9 percent year over year in December 2019. Read more: Bloomberg
Air pollution from burning fossil fuels is generating economic losses of $8 billion a day, according to a Greenpeace report. That’s about 3.3% of global gross domestic product, or $2.9 trillion per year, according to a report from Greenpeace Southeast Asia and Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. China, the U.S. and India bear the highest economic cost of soaring pollution, at an estimated $900 billion, $600 billion and $150 billion a year, respectively. Read more: Bloomberg
A massive bet on Sprint is finally paying off for Masayoshi Son. Shares in his company SoftBank rallied on Wednesday, after a US court approved the $26 billion merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, the carrier SoftBank acquired nearly a decade ago. SoftBank stock spiked nearly 14% in morning trade in Tokyo. Read more: CNN
Airbnb posted a net loss of $322 million through September 2019, after making a profit of $200 million the previous year. That could give pause to investors, many of whom have become wary of businesses without a clear path to profit after last year’s crop of money-losing companies going public with mixed results and WeWork’s cancelled IPO. Read more: Business Insider
UK trade will thrive despite the introduction of UK border checks after the Brexit transition period, the chancellor has said. Sajid Javid admitted frictionless trade with the EU would be “over” but said that Britain would have a “better future”.
Earlier, an industry body warned border checks on imports could cause fresh food supply problems. But Mr Javid said supply chains “would be protected”. Read more: BBC News
Capital Markets Report Sponsored By ZCCM-IH
In 15 trades recorded yesterday, 369,669 shares were transacted, yielding a market turnover of K2,924,320. Trading activity was recorded in Standard Chartered Bank Limited, Zambia Breweries , Zambeef and Zanaco. The LuSE All Share Index (LASI) maintained its close of 4,258.14 points as there were no share price movements. The market closed on a capitalization of K56,529,102,118 including Shoprite Holdings and K22,289,896,138 excluding Shoprite Holdings.
Chart of the Day: