Good morning. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
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World Bank chief hopes Zambia can move forward on debt treatment this week or next
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Nigeria’s unemployment rate will rise to 40.6% in 2023, KPMG says
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AECI Mining Explosives was the highest priced security in the first week of April
Story of the Day
Global trade is conducted in the currencies of the world’s major economic powers, principally the US dollar, the European Union’s euro, the Japanese yen and, to a lesser extent, the Chinese renminbi and the UK’s pound sterling. Individuals, firms and government elsewhere in the world need these currencies to import goods and services and make other payments overseas. A dollar shortage is simply a situation where the demand for this foreign currency exceeds the available supply, at the current exchange rate. Depending on how the exchange rate is determined, a dollar shortage will present itself in different ways. Read more
In Local Business News Sponsored by
World Bank President David Malpass on Thursday said he hoped Zambia’s creditors, including China, would sign a memorandum of understanding on its debt restructuring this week or next. He said it was incumbent on China and other creditors to come forward with actual commitments to allow Zambia, which requested debt treatment under a Group of 20 framework nearly two years ago, to return to sustainable debt levels. Malpass said a new sovereign debt roundtable aimed at resolving bigger issues around debt restructuring had made progress. China was more receptive to arguments that multilateral development banks could participate in debt treatment via highly concessional loans and grants. Read more: Reuters
President Hakainde Hichilema has urged lawyers in Zambia not to facilitate corruption by failing to advise their clients correctly. Hichilema said lawyers as partners in governance must instead work together and support the government in promoting human rights and protecting citizens. He said his government would not compromise in its fight against corruption adding that it was against that background that Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) must support his administration. Hichilema said the legal profession was a noble calling and therefore must not detach itself from Society. The Head of State called for stronger partnership between government and LAZ. Read more: Zambia Monitor
As a debtor country, Zambia has participated at the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (GSDR) whose main focus is on the actions urgently needed to accelerate debt restructuring processes, including under the G20 Common Framework. Participants discussed debt sustainability and debt restructuring challenges and ways to address them. Other debt country participants are Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Suriname. Participants who met on Wednesday in Washington D.C agreed on the importance to urgently improve information sharing including on macroeconomic projections and debt sustainability assessments at an early stage of the process. This is according to a joint statement issued at the end of the meeting by the International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank Group President, David Malpass, and Indian Minister of Finance, Nirmala Sitharaman, co-chairs of the GSDR. Read more: Zambia Monitor
Minister of Transport and Logistics Frank Tayali has said Zambia’s central geographic location in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Region has presented an opportunity for the country to be exposed to multiple import and export Trade and Transport Corridors. Mr. Tayali is attending the 2023 World Bank Group-International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C., USA. The Minister participated in an in-person event on “Unlocking Financing Opportunities and Development Potential of Key Corridors in Africa”. He said the transport corridors that Zambia has among them; Dar-es-Salaam Corridor linking the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia’s Copperbelt Province, the North South Corridor linking Durban with DRC/Zambia via Zimbabwe and Botswana with a spur into Malawi via Harare, the Lobito Corridor connecting Zambia to the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Angola to the Port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean for Western import and export markets in the United States of America and Europe. Read more: Lusaka Times
Technology and Science Minister Felix Mutati has disclosed that over K300 billion worth of mobile money transactions were recorded in Zambia between 2021 and 2022. Mr Mutati said the 300% growth in mobile money transactions over the same period is consistent with the overall growth of the ICT sector in Zambia. He said the roll out of new technologies such as 5G by players such as MTN has also increased the level of ICT adoption and usage in Zambia. Mr. Mutati said 5G connectivity is increasing which makes Zambia one of the big boys in Africa with regard to technology. Mr. Mutati was speaking during the opening ceremony of Huawei’s Telecom Congress at the Lusaka international Convention Centre (LICC) on Thursday. Read more: Lusaka Times
The Zambia Public Procurement Authority (ZPPA) has published the Market Price Index for the second quarter of 2023 to curb inflated pricing in public procurement. The Market Price Index provides indicative prevailing average prices of goods and services on the market and is used as a tool for making informed price decisions by spending agencies. The Authority has advised procuring entities to adhere to the Public Procurement Act Number 8 of 2020 that contains Public procurement guidelines. Read more: ZNBC
In International Business News
Global audit and tax advisory firm, KPMG, has projected that Nigeria’s unemployment rate is expected to rise to 40.6% in 2023, up from 37.7% in 2022. This was disclosed in KPMG’s International Global Economic Outlook report – H1 2023, released on Tuesday. The report states that unemployment is expected to remain a significant challenge in 2023 due to limited investment by the private sector, low industrialization, slower than required economic growth, and the inability of the economy to absorb the 4-5 million new entrants into the Nigerian job market every year. The report also predicted that the GDP would grow at a relatively slow pace of 3% in 2023 due to the slowdown in economic activity that typically characterizes periods of political transition in Nigeria. Furthermore, the anticipated slowdown in the global economy in 2023 and its trade and financial flow implications are expected to drag on GDP. Read more: Business Insider
Vedanta Ltd on Tuesday declared a fifth interim dividend for the fiscal year ending March 31 even as the company’s parent, Vedanta Resources, scrambles to secure fresh loans and refinance existing debt. The Indian natural resources company declared interim dividend of 20.50 rupees per share. The move comes days after a report said Chairman Anil Agarwal was weighing selling less than 5% stake in Vedanta. The company called the report “untrue and baseless”. The dividend payments would lead to an outflow of around 76.21 billion rupees ($927.81 million), the company said in an exchange filing. Read more: Reuters
Amazon wants investors to know it won’t be left behind in the latest Big Tech arms race over artificial intelligence. In a letter to shareholders Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company is “investing heavily” in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, the same technology that underpins ChatGPT and other similar AI chatbots. “We have been working on our own LLMs for a while now, believe it will transform and improve virtually every customer experience, and will continue to invest substantially in these models across all of our consumer, seller, brand, and creator experiences,” Jassy wrote in his letter to shareholders. The remarks, which were part of Jassy’s second annual letter to shareholder since taking over as CEO, hint at the pressure that many tech companies feel to explain how they can tap into the rapidly evolving marketplace for AI products. Since ChatGPT was released to the public in late November, Google, Facebook and Microsoft have all talked up their growing focus on generative AI technology, which can create compelling essays, stories and visuals in response to user prompts. Read more: CNN
The heads of the U.S. and Chinese central banks met in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement Friday. PBoC Governor Yi Gang and U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell“exchanged views” on China-U.S. economic and financial trends, the statement said, according to a CNBC translation. The meeting of the Fed and PBoC heads comes as political tensions between the world’s two largest economies have escalated and limited high-level interactions. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said this week that she still hoped to visit China, without specifying when. Yi was attending the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in D.C., the PBoC statement said. Read more: CNBC
In the first week of April 2023, there were eight company securities that recorded trades of which AECI Mining Explosives was the highest priced security. In comparison to around this time last year there were fourteen companies with ZCCM Investment Holdings as the highest priced security, Tuesday’s equity trading was the best performance of the week. Read more
In 105 trades recorded yesterday, 226,726 shares were transacted resulting in a turnover of K723,871.68. A share price gain of K0.15 was recorded in PUMA. Trading activity was also recorded in CEC Zambia, Standard Chartered Bank Limited, Zamebeef and Zanaco as well as CEC Africa on the quoted tier. The LuSE All Share Index (LASI) closed at 7,939.40 points, 0.22% points higherthan its previous close at 7,922.17 points. The market closed on a capitalization of K75,490,453,218.77 including Shoprite Holdings and K40,707,767,778.77 excluding Shoprite Holdings.
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