Africa Business News

According to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc sold 14,954 Shanghai-made Model 3 vehicles in China in June, up 35% month-on-month.
CPCA data showed that Tesla sold 11,095 vehicles in May, up from around 3,635 units in April. CPCA uses a different counting method than Tesla’s deliveries.
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Shares in Nokia fell up to 8% in Wednesday trade on concerns that the Finnish company was losing the business of its key client Verizon in the United States.
Nokia, battling with China’s Huawei and Sweden’s Ericsson, is trying to strengthen its 5G slate and looking especially to deployment by U.S. telecom companies for growth.
JP Morgan downgraded Nokia to neutral” from overweight, citing a potential loss of business with Verizon.
JPM in a note said they believe that there is a real risk Verizon will depend less on Nokia as their primary RAN (radio access network) supplier going forward, adding there were signs Verizon was using Samsung.
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According to OPEC Sources, Angola has agreed with OPEC to comply fully with a global pact on supply curbs and will compensate for previous overproduction by cutting more from July to September.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies led by Russia, a group known as OPEC+, agreed to cut oil output from May by a record 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) after the coronavirus crisis destroyed a third of global demand.
The record cuts are now due to run to the end of July, before tapering to 7.7 million bpd until December.
The sources told Reuters that Angola had now committed to improve its compliance with its quota and to make up for its May and June overproduction by cutting more in July to September.
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Ratings agency Fitch on Tuesday said South Africa’s plans to rein in government spending will be hard to implement due to low economic growth, adding the country had a poor track record of delivering debt and spending cuts.
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said in an emergency budget in June that the government deficit would widen to 14.6% of gross domestic product in the 2020/21 fiscal year, while debt would jump to 81.8% of GDP.
The Treasury however stuck with its promise of around 230 billion rand ($13.5 billion) of spending cuts in the short term, a target set in February before the COVID-19 pandemic.
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South Sudan’s central bank said it cut its benchmark interest rate to 10% from 13%, as part of efforts to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus outbreak on the economy.
This is the second time the central bank has slashed its rate since April, when it cut by 200 basis points to 13%.
Governor Gamal Abdalla Wani said the downward revision was geared towards reducing the cost of financing to the private sector by commercial banks.
Wani told reporters on Tuesday while announcing the cut that affordable loans will benefit business and South Sudanese citizens alike at this time of crisis.
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Finance Minister Adama Coulibaly said Ivory Coast’s gross domestic product growth is expected to slow to 0.8% in 2020 compared to a previous forecast of 7.2% if the coronavirus pandemic continues to the end the year.
Coulibaly told a closed-door business meeting on Monday that the initial GDP growth expected at 7.2% in 2020 could tumble to 0.8% if the crisis continues until the end of the year.
He said the budget deficit in the world’s top cocoa grower was expected to widen due to the crisis, which has made it difficult for the government to respect its target of 3% of GDP.
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South Africa’s rand edged firmer in tentative early trade on Wednesday, as investors weighed a surge in coronavirus infections in key global centres and more signs of a creaking local economy.
At 0700 GMT the rand was 0.23% firmer at 17.1400, retracing a fraction of the previous session’s sharp losses that dragged the unit to a 1-week low as investors attention turned to climbing COVID-19 infections around the world.
A survey showed consumer confidence plunged to a 35-year low in the second quarter, while ratings firm Fitch warned about the country’s ability to execute plans to slash spending, also hurting the rand.
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The African Development Bank (AfDB) on Tuesday said Africa is expected to partially rebound next year from a pandemic-induced economic slump, but it could still lose nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in economic output in 2020 and 2021.
African economies, however, have not been immune to the pandemic’s global shockwaves, with oil exporters such as Algeria, Angola, Libya and Nigeria on track to witness the continent’s sharpest declines in economic output.
The AfDB forecasts a 3.4% contraction in gross domestic product in 2020 - compared with a pre-pandemic projection by the Abidjan-based bank of growth of 3.9%.
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Ghana’s Ambassador to China, Edward Boateng, has assured that due process is being followed by the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation, GIADEC, to ensure that Ghana benefits adequately from the expected bauxite mining.
Government’s plan to mine bauxite in the Atewa Forest Reserve as part of the controversial US$2 billion Sinohydro deal with China, has received a lot of backlash with environmental groups kicking against the deal due to the expected impact of bauxite mining especially in the Atewa Forest.
Seven Civil Society Organisations and some private citizens have gone ahead to sue government over the plans to mine in the Atewa Forest.
Government has explained that bauxite mining would be done responsibly, and will not cause havoc to the Atewa Forest or to the environment.
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The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has extended the closing date of tax debt payments in the country.
In a statement issued on Wednesday by FIRS Director of Communications, Abdullahi Ahmad, the agency moved its waiver of penalty and interest window on tax debts owned by individuals and businesses from June 30 to August 31st, 2020.
He noted that the agency’s boss, Muhammad Nami, approved the extension as a follow up to a number of palliative measures devised by the FIRS to cushion the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Nigerian economy.”
According to him, the move is to support tax-paying individuals and business entities in the country.
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