News
tralac’s Daily News selection: 2 November 2015
The selection: Monday, 2 November
This week’s selected African trade and development events:
The African Ministerial Conference 2015: 'intellectual property for an emerging Africa'
African business in the world-class space (Initiative for Global Development)
The rapid development of Africa's private sector and emergence of a new class of leading African companies were highlighted at the Initiative for Global Development's Frontier 100 Forum, signaling a growing recognition that African businesses are moving beyond their local market to enter the world-class space. In a keynote address, Solomon Asamoah, AfDB’s Vice President of Infrastructure, Private Sector and Regional Integration, called for African governments to develop stronger business environments for companies to flourish. Asamoah said stronger business environments would involve government leaders putting in place consistent policies, increasing capacity and incentives for the government workforce, renovating airports, and transparency around the decision-making process to address corruption. "We need more transparency in government decisions. Corruption happens in darkness. Shining a light on it can help end the problem."
Africa’s Tripartite FTA, an opportunity for UAE businesses (Dubai Chamber)
Ahead of the 3nd Africa Global Business Forum which will take place on 17-18 November in Dubai, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has developed a research paper highlighting economic and investment potential in Eastern and Southern Africa and its potential to drive increased imports and exports through Dubai. The formation of Africa’s Tripartite Free Trade Area between 26 African states, is expected to benefit the economic cooperation between Africa and the UAE. Dubai represents the Africa gateway to Asian markets, Africa’s major trading partner. As a major trading partner, and with increased Africa-intra trade, more exports and imports will be transited through Dubai.
India: Commerce ministry firming up Africa-focused export strategy (Economic Times)
The commerce department is firming up an export strategy focused on Africa, giving a new dimension to the government's strategic push for ties with the continent that could offer a large market for Indian goods at a time of slowing global demand. Senior government officials led by commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman will next week apprise Parliament's consultative committee on plans to address India's continuously falling exports, with a focus on Africa and the country's neighbours. [Evaluating India-Africa maritime relations (The Diplomat)]
Experts disagree on losses due to illicit financial flows (Business Day)
Karen Miller, chairwoman of the South African Institute of Tax Professionals international committee and Deloitte’s transfer pricing leader in the Western Cape, says multinationals have raised concerns about their struggle to even get a fair share of profits out of many African countries. "Africa needs to understand that MNE’s (multinational entities) are prepared to pay tax, but only the fair share," she says. Africa is holding multinationals hostage to higher taxation as nongovernmental organisations are quick to accuse multinationals of "tax dodging" based on unsubstantiated facts, says Ms Miller.
Standard Bank: 'FRC exceeded its powers' (ThisDay)
Standard Bank Group Limited, the South African lender that operates Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, has said the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria exceeded its powers when it ruled that the bank’s West African unit had made material misstatements in its financial accounts and recommended a fine. Lawyers had advised the bank that the FRC’s notification and “an associated purported” fine against Stanbic of N1 billion don’t comply with proper processes, Bloomberg quoted the Johannesburg-based bank to have said in a statement Friday.
Nigeria/South Africa: breaking the cycle (The Africa Report)
Nigeria and South Africa should be playing that same locomotive role in Africa. They are the continent's top destinations for investment and have the market size to offer a solid economic platform: Nigeria is Africa's biggest economy with a gross domestic product of $568.5bn and South Africa is its second with $349.8bn. Commercial ties are on an upward course, albeit at a fraction of the pace that they should be. Compared to their transformative potential, Nigeria-South African relations are almost dysfunctional. What is the problem? [MTN calls in the big guns (TechCentral) Kidnap behind MTN’s woes (City Press)]
SADC's financial system stable - Angolan Central Bank (Angop)
The Angolan National Reserve Bank governor, José Pedro de Morais, last Friday in Luanda said that the financial system of the Southern Africa Development Community is stable, despite some uncertainty points. The BNA chief made this statement on the fringes of the 41st meeting of the Committee of Central Bank Governors in the SADC, having as basis a study on the financial stability of the region, made by the Angolan National Reserve Bank. José Pedro de Morais assured that the study - which may have been presented to the region’s central banks governors – is positive in spite of some uncertainty relating to a slowdown in demand and a fall in the prices of commodities.
Sources of economic growth in SADC: its likely impact on poverty and employment (Committee of Central Bankers)
The study attempted to investigate the key sources of economic growth in the region using different panel data techniques and make inference on poverty and employment. The empirical results of the paper indicated evidence of conditional convergence among the SADC countries, meaning that poorer countries tend to be growing faster and catching up with richer countries in the region. Furthermore, there was evidence that countries that are more open to international trade are likely to experience higher economic growth. The development of the financial sector also significantly promoted countries’ growth rates. Human capital was also found to significantly influence economic growth in the region.
Angola: IMF concludes 2015 Article IV Consultation (IMF)
Inflation is projected to reach close to 14% by end-2015, exceeding the National Bank of Angola’s 7–9% objective. The 2015 budget will allow the central government deficit to fall to 3.5% of GDP, compared to 6.4% last year. Public debt, however, is projected to increase significantly to 57.4% of GDP, of which 14.7% of GDP corresponds to the state-owned oil company Sonangol, by end-2015. The external current account deficit is expected to reach 7.6 percent of GDP in 2015; and international reserves to drop to US$22.3 billion (about 7 months of 2016 imports) by end-2015. Meanwhile, a wide spread emerged between the parallel and primary market exchange rates, pointing to an imbalance in the foreign exchange market.
SA's September 2015 trade data (SARS)
Africa region trade surplus: R19 960 million – a 30.5% increase in comparison to the R15 293 million surplus recorded in August 2015. BLNS: trade statistics September 2015 recorded a trade surplus of R9.23bn, with exports of R12.24bn and imports of R3bn.
Zambia–South Africa small business council launched (Lusaka Times)
The Zambia-South Africa Business Council has been launched in Johannesburg, South Africa. Formed under the auspices of the Zambian High Commission in South Africa, the body aims to promote investment and trade between the two countries and to advocate quick resolution of disputes and barriers. ZACCI and SACCI also signed a memorandum of understanding at the launch aimed at establishing closer and stronger ties in commerce and industry between the two nations.
Zimbabwe: Report spells out FDI constraints (The Herald)
Zimbabwe’s ability to attract foreign investors is badly frustrated by the high cost of labour, erratic electricity supplies, high taxes and a poor transport infrastructure, the inaugural Zimbabwe National Competitiveness Report released on Friday has revealed. Minister Chinamasa said countries bordering Zimbabwe attracted more FDI because they had investor-friendly policies. He said last year South Africa attracted about $5,7bn in foreign investment, Botswana $4,9bn, Zambia $2,5bn, while Zimbabwe only attracted about $550 million. "All the investors who come, it doesn’t matter where they are coming from whether it is China, Europe or America, the language is the same,” he said.
Zimbabwe: Textile industry operating below capacity (NewsDay)
Local textile industry has been operating at below 30% of capacity in the first-half of the year owing to an influx of cheap imports, an industry official has said. Zimbabwe Textile Manufacturers’ Association secretary-general Raymond Huni told NewsDay that the industry was still depressed at the moment as the government was yet to gazette Statutory Instruments (SIs) discouraging cheap imports of textile products into the country. “The government is in the process of gazetting the SIs enforcing the rebates introduced by the Finance minister. We hope that the SI would be gazetted in two weeks’ time and it’s when we will start realising some changes,” he said. [Zim relaxes visa regime for Chinese (NewsDay), Govt, diamond miners on collision course (The Herald)]
Botswana towers over peers in trade reforms (Mmegi)
Botswana’s leading role in ratifying the WTO's Trade Facilitation Agreement will reduce costs associated with trading of its goods and services by an estimated 13.2%. Speaking at the Cape Town workshop on Wednesday, WTO’s head of external relations, Bernard Kuiten praised Botswana’s early commitment towards the agreement, which is expected to increase global exports by between US$ 1.1trn and US$ 3.6trn depending on the timeframe and extent to which the provisions of the TFA are implemented.
Swaziland: Ngwenya to be converted to one stop border post (Swazi Observer)
SRA Commissioner General Dumisani Masilela said with the borders which were linked with South Africa, they were looking at converting Ngwenya to be a one stop border post. The CG explained that this was because Ngwenya was the country’s busiest border for commercial purposes.
Ethiopia: 2015 Article IV Consultation report (IMF)
Ethiopia's state-led development model has delivered rapid economic growth, reduced poverty, and improved social welfare. However, structural transformation has proceeded less quickly than planned, and slow export growth has increased external vulnerabilities. In addition, over the past year the economy has faced a sharp appreciation of the real exchange rate, a significant widening of the current account deficit, and (more recently) an increase in inflation. Large public borrowing from abroad, combined with weak exports, resulted in the risk of external debt distress increasing from “low” to “moderate”. [Ethiopia eager to sign trade agreements with Egypt (Daily News)]
Global tourism grew by more than 4% this year, Africa shows 5% decline (UN)
The number of tourists travelling the world during the first eight months of this year reached 810 million, a more than 4% increase from the same period in 2014, thanks to “robust” travel to Europe, according to the United Nations World Tourism Barometer. According to the barometer, Europe – the world’s most visited regional destination – recorded a robust 5% increase in international tourist arrivals, the highest across all regions and “notable” for a rather mature region. Asia and the Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East all enjoyed 4% growth, while limited data available for Africa points to an estimated 5% decrease, with North Africa decreasing by 10% and Sub-Saharan Africa by 3%.
Open Data Readiness: Mauritius well positioned to start implementing (Government of Mauritius)
The ODRA reveals that Mauritius is well poised to open up datasets. Some 15 datasets spanning budget data, expenditure data, labour statistics, education and health statistics and many more are ready to be made available in machine readable format and so released as open data, that is, data that can be used, reused and redistributed freely. Other main findings also show the following:
FDI continues to rise in the first half of 2015 (OECD)
Global FDI flows picked up in the first half of 2015, increasing by 13% compared to the second half of 2014. If we exclude the drop in the first half of 2014, global flows have been on a rising trend since the first half of 2013. FDI inflows to the G20 as a whole increased by 18% from USD 530 billion to USD 624 billion but the situation varies across G20 OECD and non OECD sub-groups: FDI flows to OECD-G20 economies increased by 49% but were offset by a 15% drop in FDI inflows received by the non-OECD G20 economies. FDI outflows for the G20 decreased by 17% to USD 441 billion with G20 sub-groups showing similar declines.
tralac’s Daily News archive
Catch up on tralac’s daily news selections by following this link ».
SUBSCRIBE
To receive the link to tralac’s Daily News Selection via email, click here to subscribe.
This post has been sourced on behalf of tralac and disseminated to enhance trade policy knowledge and debate. It is distributed to over 300 recipients across Africa and internationally, serving in the AU, RECS, national government trade departments and research and development agencies. Your feedback is most welcome. Any suggestions that our recipients might have of items for inclusion are most welcome. Richard Humphries (Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Twitter: @richardhumphri1)
