confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
MOZAMBIQUE: Nyusi in the USA for tough meetings with IMF and investors
Patrick Smith
This week Mozambique's President arrives in
the United States to placate creditors and woo
investors while South Africa's opposition parties
start to audit the African National Congress's management of local
government finance. Public sector workers in Zimbabwe face an even tougher time according to the government's latest
financial report and Ghana's latest Eurobond issue
was five times over-subscribed. The UN Human Rights Council was due to
discuss a report on the worsening situation in Burundi today.
MOZAMBIQUE: Nyusi in the USA for tough meetings with
IMF and investors
Amid the worst economic crisis since the end of the
civil war in 1992 President Filipe Nyusi arrives in
Washington DC on Thursday (15 September) to address top US business
people.
The trip is billed as a 'meet the investors' tour but it will
be haunted by the country's financial meltdown after it emerged, during
the International Monetary Fund's meeting in April, that the government
had run up over US$1.4 billion in secret debt. Nyusi's first stop will
be a meeting co-organised by the Mozambican Embassy and the Corporate
Council on Africa to talk about investment opportunities in farming,
power, and tourism.
We hear that Nyusi is also set to see IMF Managing Director Christine
Lagarde in Washington for some difficult discussions over the
organisation's conditions for resuming loans to Maputo. Nyusi's
appointment last month of Rogerio Lucas Zandamela,
who has worked at the IMF since 1988, as the new governor of
Mozambique's central bank may help. On Friday (16 September),
Nyusi is to travel to Houston, Texas, to talk to the big oil and gas
companies headquartered there. After that he will go on to New York to
attend the UN General Assembly.
SOUTH AFRICA: New Tshwane mayor will probe massive ANC
contracts
The next battle between opposition parties and the
African National Congress will be about money – specifically about more
than R10 bn. ($710 million) in contracts awarded in the Tshwane
municipality, which includes Pretoria, the national capital. Solly
Msimanga, the newly-elected Democratic Alliance mayor who took
over after the ANC's big losses in the 3 August local elections, says
he has already identified payments of R100 mn. for a contract on which
no work has been done. His team is probing other contracts awarded
by the ANC. Malefactors, insists Msimanga, will have to repay the
ill-gotten gains and will face prosecution.
ZIMBABWE: More misery for public sector workers, says
Finance Minister
Civil servants, workers in state companies, teachers,
nurses and police face more delays in salaries and possible job cuts,
warned Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa during
his budget speech in parliament in Harare on 8 September. State
salaries had consumed over 95% of all revenue collected in the first
half of this year, he said.
Painting a gloomy picture of Zimbabwe's short-term prospects,
Chinamasa said the country's debt had reached US$9.6 bn. He added that
the government had failed to make a $1.8 bn. payment due in June, which
was part of the arrears clearance programme agreed with the IMF. A
board meeting of the IMF and World Bank was initially due next month to
discuss an economic rescue plan. It is now likely to be postponed until
the end of the year at least.
GHANA: Bankers queue up to buy bond as IMF mulls
economic verdict
Finance Minister Seth Terkper has won
a boost from the markets after Ghana's latest $750 mn. Eurobond
was five times over-subscribed at an auction last week. The proceeds
will used to refinance an existing bond and pay for capital
investments, Terkper told Africa Confidential in Accra.
Ghana wanted to seize the opportunity of getting a better rate
for its bond – the coupon rate on the latest issue will be 9.3% – ahead
of any decision to raise US interest rates, Terkper added. IMF
directors are due to meet next month in Washington to discuss Ghana's
compliance with the conditions its three-year $920 mn. Extended Credit
Facility.
BURUNDI: A nearly forgotten conflict
As regional concerns mount over the simmering conflicts
in Congo-Kinshasa and South Sudan,
governments and diplomats have been paying little attention to
Burundi's violent political crisis.
The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva hopes to refocus
concerns on the mounting death toll and the worsening conditions in
Burundi at its meeting today (13 September) to discuss the findings of
an independent probe into the killing and torturing of oppositionists.
Last month, President Pierre Nkurunziza rejected a UN
plan to send a police force there and political talks led by Benjamin
Mkapa, Tanzania's former President, are
making little headway.
