Standard Bank, Africa’s top bank by assets, has signed a $1-billion loan facility with four major Chinese banks in Macau. Standard Bank named the four banks as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Macau), the Bank of China, the China Development Bank and the China CITIC Bank.
Read the story in the Mail & Guardian
The Brazil Trade Africa 2009 fair has been running since Tuesday in Johannesburg, organised by Apex-Brasil with the aim of increasing the participation of small and medium-sized companies in Brazilian exports (Macuahub).
President Jacob Zuma’s recent visit to Angola has gone a long way to smoothing the way for the businesses that formed part of his delegation, particularly in the aviation sector. For the aviation industry Angola is seen as a vital market but has until now been difficult to reach.
Read the report at BusinessDay
PORTS
The waiting period for ships to unload, at the port of Luanda, has fallen from 80 to 10 days after the introduction of new operating rules, Angola’s Transport Minister, Augusto Tomás said in Luanda (Macauhub).
The investment plan for the modernisation of the general cargo terminal at the port of Luanda for the next five years, valued at US$52 million, aims to provide the port with greater operating capacity, the general director of Multiterminais said (Macauhub).
ENERGY
The deputy Angolan Energy Minsiter, João Baptista Borges said in Cuito, in Angola’s Bié province, that the government planned to quickly replace the energy potential the country had before its civil war, by 2013 (Macauhub).
CONSTRUCTION
Russia’s Alrosa, one of the world’s biggest mining companies will invest $500 million to build homes, schools and dams in Angola in the next few years, a company official said (Reuters).
ATLANTICO
South Africa is the African country that invested most in the Angolan economy. South African investment amounts for a total of 3.3 percent, or US$60 million of African investments. The sectors in which most South African investments have been made are manufacturing industry with 37.5 percent of the total, retail with 12.8 percent and construction with 11.4 percent (Macauhub).
Angolan and South African businesses urged an end to visa restrictions they say are damaging economic ties between South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, and one of Africa’s biggest oil producers (Reuters).
INVESTMENTS
Geo-Rumo, a special foundations company of Portugal’s FDO group, said Monday in Braga, northern Portugal, that it had invested 25 million euros in the creation of a subsidiary on Luanda Island in Angola (Macauhub).
Japanese group Sharp Corp plans to set up a factory in Angola, the group’s director for Malaysia, Yukio Sakamoto said at the group’s first seminar in Angola and in Africa, cited by Angolan newspaper Jornal de Angola (Macauhub).
BANKING
Angolan-owned bank, Banco Privado Atlântico – Europa (BPAE), owned by Banco Privado Atlântico (BPA), began operating in Portugal on Monday, in the investment banking sector (Macauhub).
OIL
Angola’s daily crude oil exports are scheduled to rise to the highest this year, signaling that Africa’s second-biggest producer continues to pump more than its OPEC quota (Bloomberg).
South African President Jacob Zuma signed on Thursday an oil agreement with his Angolan counterpart during a visit aimed at strengthening economic ties with the oil-rich country.
Read the whole story at the Mail & Guardian
Earlier Angolan president Dos Santos said Angola needed more qualified labour from SA to help rebuild infrastructure destroyed by Angola’s 27-year civil war, which ended in 2002, and to tap into its oil and mining industry.
“We want to create a strategic partnership between our two countries,” Dos Santos said in a speech to his cabinet and 11 South African ministers as he sat next to Zuma. Zuma is accompanied by a delegation of more than 150 South African businessmen. Pretoria billed the trip as the biggest business delegation to take part in a state visit abroad since 1994.
For more on this story see BusinessDay
South Africa was rather slow to feel the impact of the global economic downturn. As other countries start to report their emergence from recession, its recovery is likely to lag behind the rest of the world, too.
Read the full analysis in The Economist
South African President Jacob Zuma travels to Angola on Wednesday in a bid to strengthen ties between the continent’s biggest economy and one of its top oil producers.
Read the report at the Mail & Guardian
BUSINESS
South African furniture manufacturer and retailer Coricraft is broadening its horizons with a move into Angola later this year. MD David Jacobson says “Africa holds great appeal” and the company has signed a distribution agreement for Angola which will start towards the year-end. Under the deal, Coricraft will supply product to an Angolan retail agent with a view to developing this market (BusinessDay).
CORRUPTION
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Angolan Foreign Minister Assuncao dos Anjos address a press conference in Luanda, August 9, 2009 -Clinton pressed Angola on Sunday to do more to fight corruption during a two-day visit to the oil-producing country aimed at bolstering ties between the two nations (BusinessDay).
ATLANTIC
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, bringing her democracy and development tour of Africa to oil-rich Angola on Sunday, encouraged the war-ravaged country to continue reforms and pledged to boost trade ties with a major energy producer (News24).
ATLANTICO
Trade between the eight members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) remains at low levels, says the head of the Council of Portuguese Chambers of Commerce in Brazil, Romulo Alexandre Soares. Soares told the Lusa news agency: “Today these states have trade with the rest of the world valued at around US$ 550 billion, but between them level is around US$ 13 billion or about 2.3% of their total international exchanges.” The official was citing figures from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (Macauhub).
INVESTMENT
At least sixteen factories will be built in the coming four years, in the northern Zaire Province, under the government programme to re-launch the manufacturing industry, on Thursday announced the local industry, geology and mining department director, Adão Alberto Sofia (ANGOP).
COFFEE
Angola’s coffee production this year is expected to reach 17,000 tons, according to deputy minister of Agriculture, Zacarias Sambeny. Mr Sambeny said the figure represents the Government’s investment in the sector, in an effort to relaunch coffee production in the country. According to the deputy minister, production in 2008 reached six tons, which is far below the 200,000 tons of 1973, when Angola was the third world producer (ANGOP).
ECONOMY
The World Bank has upwardly revised its prediction for a 3% contraction in Angola this year to 0% (Macauhub).
INFRASTRUCTURE
India is to provide US$ 40 million for the building of a railway between the cities of Lubango and Matala in the province of Huila, India’s ambassador to Angola, Ghanashyam Ajjampor Rangaiam has said (Macauhub).
South Africa is considering the construction of three nuclear power stations on its coastline despite objections from environmentalists.
Read the full report in the Mail & Guardian
Will Jacob Zuma keep the poor happy and his leftwing allies at bay?
Read the full story in The Economist
SABMiller (SAB), one of the world’s largest brewers, on Friday said that it is to open a new $125 million brewery and sparkling soft drinks (SSD) plant in Angola later this year.
Read the full report in BusinessDay
Anglo American has appointed Sir John Parker as chairperson to bolster the mining company’s defences against an unwanted takeover bid from rival Xstrata.
Read the full story in the Mail & Guardian
The world’s second-biggest brewer SABMiller is to sell 10 percent of its South African unit to black investors in a deal worth $750 million to meet the country’s affirmative action rules.
Read the full story at Reuters
Brazil wants historic emissions to be the basis for greenhouse gas pollution targets, slated for discussion during December climate talks in Copenhagen, Brazil’s top climate negotiator said in an interview. China, India and South Africa will back the historic emissions proposal in the United Nations talks.
Read the full story at Reuters
Spending on soccer’s greatest tournament by the South African government should provide a welcome fiscal boost as the country experiences its first recession in 17 years.
Read the full story in The Economist
BANKING & FINANCE
South African ABSA Group sold its 50% shareholding in Banco Comercial Angolano Sarl (BCA) to six of the current BCA Angolan shareholders for an undisclosed sum. As Absa‘s strategy is to obtain controlling shareholdings in banks in selected countries in Africa and the bank was unable to obtain outright control of BCA, it has therefore decided to dispose of its shareholding (BusinessDay).
Angola plans to launch a sovereign fund in 2009 to invest the oil-producing nation’s wealth abroad. Plans to create the fund, known as the Fundo Soberano Angolano, were announced in November by President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, but the project has since been delayed due to the global economic downturn (Reuters).
POLITICS
The Angolan government should end the unlawful detention and torture of people suspected of rebel activities in the oil-producing province of Cabinda, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report (Reuters).
Angolan society is like a volcano that could erupt at any moment if serious measures to tackle poverty and social exclusion are not taken, Angolan writer and former minister Artur Pestana said. Angola has been labelled as one of the world’s richest nations in terms of resources; it rivals Nigeria as Africa’s biggest oil producer and is also a top diamond exporter. But two-thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day. “If that volcano one day explodes, we cannot say there weren’t enough warning signs,” Pestana, simply known as Pepetela, said during the presentation of a book from an author-friend entitled “Social Exclusion in Angola” (Reuters).
MINING
Angolan police have so far this year deported more than 6,000 foreigners caught digging for diamonds illegally in the country’s northeastern region of Lunda Norte (Reuters).
Angola will spend $350 million carrying out a nationwide geological survey to determine the extent of the country’s mineral recourses (Bloomberg).
The study will comprise of aerial photographs and mapping, and will take five years to complete, the Luanda-based broadcaster said.
CONSTRUCTION & INFRASTRUCTURE
Portugal’s biggest construction firm Mota-Engil has inked a deal to form a consortium under its control in Angola with the African country’s state energy company Sonangol and local bank BPA (Reuters).
Mota-Engil has been awarded a contract in Angola to build a container terminal in Luanda. The project is due to be delivered in June, 2010 and the capacity of the container terminal at the port of Luanda will rise from 150,000 TEU (twenty foot equivalent units) to 204,500 TEU (Macauhub).
OIL
Angola will start prospecting for oil in the onshore Cabinda regions of Necuto and Buco Zau in July. The state-owned company will conduct seismic studies to determine the existence of oil in the areas (Bloomberg).
TRADE
Angola has been offered a $1 billion credit line from the Export DSevelopment Canada agency to boost trade between the two countries. The loan will be available to entrepreneurs wanting to import or export products to either country (Bloomberg).
Portuguese exports to Angola totalled 720 million euros between January and April, having risen 21.6 percent against the same period of 2008. The rise posted boosted Angola’s role as the fourth destination for Portuguese exports, and the first outside the European Union (Macauhub).
INVESTMENT
Angola will spend $29 million by 2010 building four factories in the south-eastern province of Kuando Kubango. The red clay, zinc sheeting, tire re-treading and aluminum crockery factories will create 190 jobs (Bloomberg).
Dutch companies Heerema and Cembir Maritime Construction plan to invest US$160 million in the construction of a ship yard in the municipality of Porto Amboim, in Angola’s Kwanza Sul province. Construction of the ship yard would provide assistance at sea for Angola’s oil and gas industry, and the yard was expected to be operational in June, 2010 (Angop).
AIR TRAVEL
German airline Lufthansa said it planned to open up a second weekly flight to Angola, between Luanda and Frankfurt, after a year of a once-a-week flight with a load factor of over 70 percent.
Portuguese air carrier, TAP Air Portugal, has announced that it will add nine flights to the destinations of Luanda, Dakar, Praia and Sao Tome over the Summer. TAP said it will offer three additional flights per week to Luanda.
TELECOMS
Angola and Russia signed a contract for the building, launching and operation of the Angolan telecommunication satellite named AngoSat, following the visit of president of the Russian Federation, Dimitri Medvedev. Worth USD 327.600 million and a production time estimated at 39 months, the contract foresees apart from supply of technical means, the training of Angolan cadres in space technology for satellite management. AngoSat will have 15 years of life and will serve to support national infrastructures of telecommunications and terrestrial digital television all over the country. It will enable the coverage in Africa, Europe, in C band, and the Southern Africa, in particular, in Ku band (Angop).
COFFEE
The Angolan agriculture sector will harvest 12,000 tonnes of coffee during the 2009 campaign, in comparison to the 5,000 tonnes harvested in 2008, the minister of Agriculture, Afonso Pedro Canga announced at Cabuto farm, in coastal Kwanza Sul province (Angop).
Tensions between the union federation and the government are running high. High enough to force Mr Zuma to deviate from his declared market-friendly macroeconomic policies?
Read the full story in The Economist
The drop in the gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2009 show that — unsurprisingly — South Africa is not immune to the worldwide economic downturn.
Read the analysis by Neva Seidman Makgetla in the Mail & Guardian
Brazil is trying to forge an alliance with African and South American countries to defend seabed mining rights and strategic shipping lanes in the South Atlantic.
Read the full story at Reuters
South Africa’s banking system was stable and performing better than systems in many developed markets, Nedbank Group chairman Reuel Khoza said.
Read the full story in Business Day
