Story of the Day:
When she walked into the room, people eyes lit up and their faces beamed with smiles. This is the aura that surrounds Zambia’s World Wildlife Fund Country Head, Nachilala Nkombo who on 29th November 2022 hosted a gala event, that included heads of Government and the business community, to celebrate 60 years of her organization in Zambia. WWF Zambia has come a long way. What started out as an effort to save a patch of wild life area in the Kafue flats in 1962, has become the quintessential example of impact saving the environment can have on people’s lives. Saving the environment requires leadership. Over the last 3 years since taking the leadership role of the Zambia outfit, Nachilala has been exceptional in stakeholder management. Bringing together the leaders that matter in this fight to save our planet cannot be an easy tasks and yet last night’s event was a clear testimony of the social capital Nachilala has garnered during her tenure. Read more
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Zambia is pushing hard to complete the restructuring of nearly $15 billion of external debt in the first quarter of 2023 and is “in active engagement” with its largest bilateral creditor China, Zambia’s finance minister said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT conference. Zambia defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2020 and the current government, which took power last year, has been on a quest to restructure its loans and rebuild an economy ravaged by mismanagement under previous administrations and COVID-19. Read more: Reuters
The United States, Costa Rica, Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia will co-host a second “Summit for Democracy” next year, the countries said on Tuesday in a joint statement issued through the White House. “Building on the first Summit for Democracy held in December 2021, this gathering will demonstrate how democracies deliver for their citizens and are best equipped to address the world’s most pressing challenges,” the statement said of the summit, scheduled for March 29 to March 30. Read more: Reuters
The Energy Regulation Board (ERB) has increased the pump price of Petrol by K1.58 ngwee per litre. The Price of Petrol will now move from K24.31-ngwee per litre to K25.89-ngwee per litre effective midnight. The Pump price of Diesel on the other hand has remained unchanged at K27.38-ngwee per litre. Read more: ZNBC
Zambia’s refined copper export earnings increased by 3.5 percent to K9.5 billion in October, up from K9.1 billion recorded in September, despite a decline in the price of the metal on the international market. During the period under review, copper prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) for the corresponding months decreased by 1.5 percent to US$7,621.21 per tonne in October 2022 from US$7,734.70 per tonne in September 2022. Zambia Statistics Agency (ZamStats) interim statistician general Mulenga Musepa said export volumes in October increased by 9.1 percent to 78,200 tonnes from 71,700 tonnes in September. Read more: Zambia Daily Mail
International Business and Finance
After six months, most of the 33 companies and 903 workers trialing the schedule, with no reduction in pay, are unlikely ever to go back to a standard working week, according to the organizers of the global pilot program. None of the 27 participating companies who responded to a survey by 4 Day Week Global said they were leaning towards or planning on returning to their former five-day routine. About 97% of the 495 employees who responded said they wanted to continue with a four-day week. The majority of companies taking part in the trial were based in the United States and Ireland. Those responding to the survey rated their overall experience 9 out of 10, based on productivity and performance. Read more: CNN
US stocks exploded higher Wednesday. The Dow is now more than 20% above its 52-week low, which puts it in a new bull market. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell strongly suggested that the central bank is ready to slow its pace of interest rate hikes. Powell noted that the Fed is still concerned about inflation but that it also does not want to jeopardize the health of the labor market and broader economy either. Wednesday’s rally helped push the markets to their second straight month of solid returns. The three major indexes wrapped up November with gains between 4% and 6%. The Dow soared more than 735 points, or 2.2% The S&P 500 rose 3.1%. The Nasdaq Composite shot up 4.4%. Read more: CNN
Nigeria is one of the world’s largest oil producers, yet, has failed to develop an oil refinery sector. Fortunately, the Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, disclosed that Nigeria is a year away from refining its own crude oil. This report is according to Reuters, which stated that the minister had made the announcement to reporters in Abuja on Tuesday. According to the report, the Minister revealed that the groundwork for refining crude oil in Nigeria is already being laid, as a refurbished refinery in the city of Port Harcourt Is set to deliver 60,000 barrels per day of refined crude by the end of December 2023. He went ahead to assure that in the worst case scenario, Nigeria expects to stop importing petroleum products somewhere around the third quarter of 2023. Read more: Business Insider
A “digital” trade deal between the UK and Ukraine has been agreed. The digital trade agreement was struck at a London meeting of Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch and Ukraine’s Minister for Trade and Economy Yulia Svyrydenko. Trading digitally is particularly valuable, the UK government argues, because war and damage to Ukrainian infrastructure makes trading physically difficult. It is hoped the agreement will help bolster Ukraine’s beleaguered economy. Read more: BBC News
Capital Markets Report
In 100 trades recorded yesterday, 30,261 shares were transacted resulting in a turnover of K120,933.27. A share price gain of K5.00 was recorded in Investrust. A share price loss of K0.02 and K0.15 was recorded in CEC Zambia and Standard Chartered Bank Limited respectively. Trading activity was also recorded in BATA, Chilanga Cement, Madison Financial Services, PUMA, Zambeef, Zanaco and Zambia Sugar. The LuSE All Share Index (LASI) closed at 7,284.75 points, 0.76% down from it’s previous close at 7,340.28 points. The market closed on a capitalization of 72,640,890,116.21 including Shoprite Holdings and K38,858,204,676.21 excluding Shoprite Holdings.