ABUJA (Reuters) &#8211; The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has fired 850 workers, many of them from refineries, amidst the coronavirus pandemic, an oil union said on Tuesday.



The workers are both skilled and unskilled contractors, including technicians who helped maintain Nigeria’s oil refineries, said Lumumba Okugbawa, general secretary of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), speaking on the phone.



The NNPC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.



Layoffs in Nigeria’s oil sector are a tense issue, with frequent stand-offs between the NNPC and unions. Nigeria is dependent on crude sales to prop up its struggling economy, now at risk of its worst recession in four decades due to the coronavirus and the pandemic tanking global oil prices.



Yet Nigeria’s refineries are barely operational. Almost all of the country’s fuel supply is processed overseas at great cost, despite Nigeria being Africa’s largest crude producer.



In May, the NNPC said it had more than 6,600 staff.

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Nigeria’s NNPC fired 850 workers, many from refineries, oil union says

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa’s Sun International will tap shareholders for funds at 9.44 rand a share in a 1.2 billion rand ($71.48 million) rights issue, the hotel and casino owner said on Tuesday.



The owner of Sun City resort will use the rights issue funds to improve its short to medium-term liquidity and strengthen its balance sheet as the coronavirus restrictions hit its operations.



The company will offer 127 million shares at 9.44 rand each, representing a 25% discount, it said in a statement.



($1 = 16.7877 rand)

suncity

South Africa’s Sun International to issue 127 mln shares in rights offer

LONDON (Reuters) &#8211; Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered Huawei equipment to be purged completely from Britain’s 5G network by the end of 2027, risking the ire of China by signalling that the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker is not welcome in the West.



As Britain prepares to cast off from the European Union, fears over the security of Huawei have forced Johnson to choose between global rivals the United States and China.



He had been under intense pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, while Beijing had warned London, which has sought to court China in recent years, that billions in investment would be at risk if it sided with Washington.



Reversing a January decision to allow Huawei to supply up to 35% of the non-core 5G network, Johnson banned British telecoms operators from buying any 5G equipment from Huawei by year-end and gave them seven years to rip out existing gear.



“This has not been an easy decision, but it is the right one for the UK telecoms networks, for our national security and our economy, both now and indeed in the long run,” digital minister Oliver Dowden told parliament.



“By the time of the next election, we will have implemented in law an irreversible path for the complete removal of Huawei equipment from our 5G networks”.



The reason given for the about-turn was the impact of new U.S. sanctions on chip technology, which Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, part of the GCHQ eavesdropping agency, had told ministers meant Huawei was not a reliable supplier.



White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said Britain’s action reflected a growing consensus that Huawei and other untrusted vendors posed a threat to national security because they remained “beholden to the Chinese Communist Party”.



According to a law introduced in 2017 under Chinese President Xi Jinping, Chinese companies have an obligation to support and cooperate in China’s national intelligence work.



China’s ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming called the decision “disappointing and wrong”.Huawei logo is pictured on the headquarters building in Reading, Britain July 14, 2020. REUTERS/Matthew Childs



“It has become questionable whether the UK can provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from other countries,” he said.



The ban will delay the roll-out of 5G &#8211; cast as the nervous system of the future economy &#8211; by two to three years, and add costs of up to 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion).



The Dec. 31, 2027 deadline was not as bad as British telecoms operators such as BT (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/BT.L">BT.L</a>), Vodafone (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/VOD.L">VOD.L</a>) and Three (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/0215.HK">0215.HK</a>) had feared. They were concerned that they would be forced to spend billions of pounds to rip out Huawei equipment much faster.



BT said 500 million pounds already earmarked to comply with the earlier cap would cover its costs. Its shares closed up 4%.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">5G PROXY WAR?</h2>



Hanging up on Huawei marks an end to what former Prime Minister David Cameron cast as a “golden era” of ties which saw Britain pushed as Europe’s top destination for Chinese capital.



But London has been dismayed by a crackdown in Hong Kong and the perception China did not tell the whole truth over the novel coronavirus outbreak.



Huawei said the decision was more about U.S. trade policy than security. “It threatens to move Britain into the digital slow lane, push up bills and deepen the digital divide,” a spokesman said.Slideshow&nbsp;(3 Images)



In what some have compared to the Cold War antagonism with the Soviet Union, the United States is worried that 5G dominance could lead towards Chinese technological supremacy.



After Australia first raised alarms about the risk of 5G being hijacked by a hostile state, worries in the West about Huawei have mounted.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/huawei-usa-campaign">here</a>



The United States calls the company an agent of the Chinese Communist state &#8211; a view widely supported in Johnson’s Conservative Party. Huawei denies it spies for China and says the United States wants to frustrate its growth because no U.S. company offers the same technology at a competitive price.



In a tweet, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the British decision “advances Transatlantic security in the #5G era while protecting citizens’ privacy, national security, and free-world values.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">HUAWEI ALTERNATIVE?</h2>



British ministers say the rise to global dominance of Huawei, founded in 1987 by a former People’s Liberation Army engineer, has caught the West off-guard.



Dowden said Britain was working with its allies to foster stronger rivals to Huawei, naming firms from Finland, Sweden, South Korea and Japan.



“The first thing we need to do is ensure that we protect the other two vendors in this market, so Nokia (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/NOKIA.HE">NOKIA.HE</a>), and Ericsson (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/ERICb.ST">ERICb.ST</a>),” Dowden said. “Secondly we need to get new suppliers in, that starts with Samsung (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/005930.KS">005930.KS</a>), and it starts with NEC (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/6701.T">6701.T</a>).”



Nokia and Ericsson said they stood ready to replace Huawei gear.



By allowing Huawei’s equipment to remain in the 5G network until end-2027 and in older mobile networks, Johnson stopped short of demands from some lawmakers for a ban in four years.



Chinese imports to Britain doubled in the 15 years to 2018, to about 9% of all goods imported, worth 43 billion pounds.

The Tories have it – Boris Johnson returns to power with a stronger Brexit mandate

UK to purge Huawei from 5G by end of 2027, siding with Trump over China

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) &#8211; The head of Cecil Rhodes has been chopped away from a bust of the 19th century colonialist at a monument on the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, park rangers said on Tuesday.



The bust housed at the top of a flight of steps at the Rhodes Memorial shows Rhodes with his arms folded. His right hand now cups what would have been his cheek &#8211; only with most of his face and head missing.



Lauren Clayton, a spokeswoman for South African National Parks in the Western Cape, said rangers patrolling Table Mountain came across the disfigured bust during regular patrols on Monday.



The incident likely occurred on Sunday night or Monday morning, she added. She said no one had claimed responsibility.



Thousands of protesters have marched across the United States and Europe calling for the removal of monuments seen as glorifying the imperialist nature of countries such as Britain.



Rhodes, who made his fortune in South African diamond mining, has become a lightning rod for anti-colonial anger since students forced the University of Cape Town in 2015 to remove his statue from its campus.



Completed in 1912, Rhodes Memorial consists of massive granite steps, flanked by bronze lions, and a rider astride a bronze horse at the beginning of the steps which leads to the top where the bust is situated, with an inscription beneath.



“It has been vandalised before, multiple times &#8230; At this stage we are still unclear about the reasoning behind the vandalism,” Clayton said.



Last month students at Britain’s Oxford University called for a Rhodes statue to be removed, triggered in part by protesters in the port city of Bristol tearing down a statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston and throwing it into the harbour.

Cecil John Rhodes

Cecil Rhodes loses his head in Cape Town

RABAT (Reuters) &#8211; The coronavirus crisis is expected to expand Morocco’s informal economy of people who work for cash, reducing tax revenue and leaving many without social protection, the head of the state planning agency and economists said.



More than a third of Moroccan workers are already in the informal economy, doing manual or domestic labour, driving taxis or selling in the streets, accounting for 14% of gross domestic product, according to the agency.



However, the crisis is expected to expand this informal economy as people lose their jobs in companies and consumers seek the cheaper goods and services provided by workers who are not registered with the state’s pension fund.



Morocco, with 16,047 coronavirus cases, last month allowed cafes, restaurants and other services to resume activity at half capacity except in provinces where infections remain high. Last week, it extended an emergency decree giving local authorities leeway in taking restrictive measures until Aug. 10.



Unemployment is expected to surge to a rate of 14.8% in 2020 from about 9.2% before the pandemic, the agency said.



Fatima Hamdane, 53, who lost her job as a worker at a car parts manufacturing plant&nbsp;in Casablanca, said she would work as a cleaner even if her employer did not pay social security duties. She has diabetes and has already skipped medical checks because of her hard financial situation.



“I knocked on many doors, but couldn’t find a job,” she said. “Most have rejected me because of my age.”



Ahmed Lahlimi, the planning agency chief, told Reuters that while the number of people moving into the informal economy was expected to grow, the agency did not have any updated figures estimating the extent of the problem.



The informal economy already costs the state 34 billion dirhams ($3.4 billion) in annual tax losses, Finance Minister Mohamed Benchaaboun said.



Morocco’s fiscal deficit stood at $2.3 billion at the end of May with revenue down and spending up because of the crisis. It is expected to widen to 7.5% of gross domestic product in 2020 from 4.1% last year while the economy is expected to shrink by 5%, according to the government’s reviewed budget.



The Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises, a business group, says the informal economy puts 2.9 million jobs at risk in formal companies by undercutting their costs. In May, it recommended offering tax incentives to make more companies register officially.



“In the past, the state has tolerated the informal economy in times of social tensions such as during the 2011 pro-democracy protests,” said Rachid Awraz, of the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis.



But, in the long run, it leaves workers without social protection and prey to poverty in addition to its low added value for the economy, he said.



Labour Minister Mohamed Amekraz did not answer Reuters requests for comment.

1280px-Weekly_Market_Zawiya_Ahansal_Morocco_June_2019

Crisis-hit Moroccans join ‘informal economy’ as job market shrinks

(Reuters) &#8211; The Foschini Group (TFG) said on Tuesday it was looking to raise up to 3.95 billion rand ($235.35 million) through a rights offer to cut its debt, as the South African retailer faces challenges in its core markets.



“The board of directors and management of TFG believe it is prudent and necessary to reduce TFG’s financial indebtedness now by way of the rights offer,” the company said in a statement.



TFG on Monday announced its plan to acquire certain stores and selected assets of Jet from Edcon’s administrators.



($1 = 16.7833 rand)

jettttt

South Africa’s TFG to raise 3.95 bln rand to cut debt

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) &#8211; At a centuries-old vineyard overlooked by South Africa’s Drakenstein mountain, the country’s biggest single wine exporter Distell is battling a problem of plenty.



Prestigious wines, such as Nederburg, are bottled at the vineyard in Paarl, just outside Cape Town, and shipped locally and worldwide.



But the shipping can’t keep pace with the combined impact of an abundant harvest and lockdown disruption that has led to a glut that sits maturing in French oak barrels or stored in metal vats at wine estates.



South Africa, one of the top 10 wine producers, has around 240 million litres of stock across the industry, said executives at Distell, which itself has 40 million litres.



“It is a massive problem&#8230; that could take at least two years to resolve,” Distell CEO Richard Rushton said.



He told an investor call in June the impact on prices in the industry could be severe and said the company had lost some of its listings in wine outlets abroad as exports were halted.



South Africa also banned domestic alcohol sales as part of lockdown restrictions begun in March. Early in June it allowed sales during limited trading hours, but President Cyril Ramaphosa reimposed a sales ban from July 13 as new infections surged.



Industry body Vinpro said some 3 billion rand ($177.54 million) in sales had been lost in the first nine weeks of restrictions. Exports have resumed, but there is a backlog in the Cape Town port, it said.



Rushton said Distell hoped online sales would help and it has also begun producing alcohol-based sanitisers.



Even in the best of times, managing wine stocks in finite cellar space requires thinking a few moves ahead, but not usually as many.



“When you start off with oversupply, then it’s chess from day one,” Distell’s head winemaker Niel Groenewald said.



He faces a situation unprecedented in his two decades of experience and perhaps since the founding of the Nederburg estate in 1791.

Wines of South Africa CEO: What the resumption of wine exports means for the industry

South Africa’s Distell plays chess to beat lockdown wine glut

BRUSSELS (Reuters) &#8211; Aspen (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/APNJ.J">APNJ.J</a>) has offered to cut prices by an average of 73% for six off-patent cancer drugs, EU antitrust regulators said on Tuesday, a move that could help the South African pharmaceutical company avoid a potentially hefty fine.



The European Commission opened an investigation into Aspen in 2017 following concerns it may have charged excessive prices for drugs critical in treating patients suffering from certain types of life-threatening cancer, such as leukaemia and multiple myeloma.



Aspen’s price cuts will cover all of Europe except for Italy, which imposed a five million euro ($5.68 million) fine on the company in 2016 for price hikes of up to 1,500% for some drugs.



The European Commission, the EU executive, said it would seek feedback from interested parties before deciding whether to accept the company’s offer.



“The proposed commitments aim at bringing to an end Aspen’s suspected excessive pricing conduct with respect to its six off-patent cancer medicines, which the Commission suspects to constitute an abuse of a dominant position,” the Commission said in a statement.



It said Aspen’s proposal would lead to an immediate price cut in its net prices to below 2012 levels for most of the drugs, guarantee supply and involve a 10-year price ceiling.



The price cuts would apply retroactively from Oct. 1, 2019, when Aspen first submitted its concessions to regulators.



Under its antitrust settlement procedures, accepting the offer would mean no fines and no acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Sanctions can amount to 10% of a company’s global turnover.

Stephen Saad on the impact of COVID-19 on Aspen

Aspen offers to cut cancer drug prices, may avoid EU antitrust fine

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; Creditors of loss-making South African Airways (SAA) approved a rescue plan on Tuesday which requires at least 10 billion rand ($596 million) in new funding, throwing the ball into the government’s court to come up with the cash to save the airline.



Administrator Siviwe Dongwana told a creditor meeting that the plan had been approved by 86% of voting interests.



“The practitioners welcome the approval of the business rescue plan with an overwhelming majority of those who voted. It is an important step forward for the airline and provides much-needed certainty towards a restructured SAA,” Dongwana added in a statement.



The rescue plan envisages scaling back the state-owned airline’s fleet and shedding jobs but requires the government to find at least 10 billion rand of new funds for it to work.



It is not yet clear where that money will come from.



Dongwana told the creditor meeting that the Department of Public Enterprises had told the administrators that the government would deliver a letter to them on Wednesday with a funding commitment.

Airbus_A330-200_South_African_AW_(SAA)_F-WWYL_-_MSN_1223_-_Will_be_ZS-SXX_(5838450879)

South African Airways creditors approve rescue plan

Africa needs to spend 28.6 billion-a-year until 2030 to have any hope of to closing Africa’s yawning energy gap, but it is unclear where the money will come from.



Most Africans live without electricity as most nations struggle to generate the electricity the continent’s emerging economies need. South Africa’s national power generator Eskom – with a struggling national grid putting out 40,000 MW &#8211; generates half of the continent’s electricity. Even South Africa struggles to keep the lights on and countries with tiny electricity, like Malawi, struggle even more and find it an obstacle to growth. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Nigerian Damilola Ogunbiyi, the special representative for sustainable energy foraAll and Co-Chair of United Nations-Energy, confirmed that the energy gap in Africa was huge and would need at least $28.6 billion-a-year, until 2030, to close it. She told CNBC Africa that the question was how to gather the money.



“We need everything on the table. We need public sector support and also private money to come in. There can’t be one source of money. We need to convince private investors that putting power into Africa it is an investment,” says Ogunbiyi. &nbsp;



“I think what this pandemic has taught us is that if we don’t work together, then everyone is going to suffer. &nbsp;



Ogunbiyi was encouraged greatly by the electrification programme in the country of her birth. She said five million Nigerians, in rural areas, had been connected to solar power.



“In a large scale oil energy producing nation, that is not bad,” she says

Damilola Ogunbiyi_Headshot

How we can  close the 28 billion dollar-a-year energy gap in Africa

LAGOS/ABUJA (Reuters) &#8211; Early one evening, Folasade Fadare and her team of four disease hunters piled into a van and headed for Okegun, a rural community down a narrow potholed road in eastern Lagos state.



A coronavirus patient had visited the area, and it was their task to find anyone exposed, isolate them and trace their contacts. The team quickly realised the job was too big: more than 100 people needed to be interviewed and tested.



Ultimately, only the two sickest people, feverish and gasping for air, were sent to hospital to be isolated and tested. The rest were told what symptoms to watch for and urged to stay home for two weeks.



“We are not enough,” said Fadare, an epidemiologist who has battled Ebola and Lassa fever for more than 20 years.



Contact tracers like Fadare are among the few safeguards standing between Africa’s fragile public health systems and a pandemic that could quickly overwhelm them. Infections are rising, but many governments have been easing lockdowns to save their economies.



In Nigeria, medics who do tracing say they are near breaking point.



Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have increased tenfold to over 32,000 since the government began easing restrictions in May, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says. At least 740 have died.



Lagos, Nigeria’s largest state and epicentre of its outbreak, has 200 tracers for a population of 25 million. That is fewer than one per 100,000 people, compared to around 14 per 100,000 in Turkey.



The state’s health commissioner, Akin Abayomi, dismissed concerns about the scale of its tracing efforts.



“We recruit contact tracers as necessary. We have a large pool of primary health care staff and volunteers to select from,” he said in a text message, adding there were 1,000 people in the pool.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">POLIO NETWORK</h3>



Nigeria’s experience with infectious diseases meant it could quickly mobilize veteran epidemiologists like Fadare along with hundreds of medics and community volunteers already embedded in remote communities to fight polio.



But nothing prepared them for this epidemic, Fadare said. More than 12,400 cases have been confirmed in Lagos state alone &#8211; any one potentially infecting scores of others, she said. Members of her team say they are overwhelmed, receiving updates about infected people as late as midnight.



Unlike South Korea and Singapore, which used contact tracing apps, Nigeria has had to resort to more labour-intensive methods. Only a quarter of the population uses smartphones.



A team of medics is tasked to visit each contact to verify symptoms, identify contacts and ask them to stay at home for 14 days. The team then checks in with the person each day by phone, to monitor compliance. If the person reports symptoms, they will be referred to another team for testing.



However, the stigma associated with COVID-19 means many are keen to avoid tracers, Fadare said. People commonly turn off their phones, deny their identity and lie about when they last saw coronavirus patients.Slideshow&nbsp;(4 Images)



Such fears can be justified. In Abuja, one man’s neighbours moved out after he was tested. Others suspected of being infected have been told to leave, said Ramatu Abdu-Aguye, head of tracing in the capital.



So the teams keep a low profile, using unmarked vans to visit homes.



Nigeria’s low testing rates are making the tracers’ job harder, they say. Just over 183,000 tests have been conducted in a country of 200 million, according to the NCDC. A government target announced in April was for 2 million tests by the end of July.



Olujimi Oyetomi, a Nigerian health ministry spokesman, said more testing machines and materials were being deployed.



Adding to the challenges, 10 tracers working for Fadare contracted COVID-19 and had to take up to three weeks off.



As lockdowns ease, many Nigerians are moving around and ignoring safety measures.



Traffic jams have returned to Lagos, increasing the time it takes tracers to reach contacts, many of whom are already hard to find because their homes have no formal address.



Outside the Lagos clinic where Fadare’s teams meet, life goes on as normal. Men sit around on plastic chairs, women sell instant noodles, and yellow minibuses weave through the streets. Nobody keeps their distance, and those who wear masks pull them down to speak.



Fadare fears they don’t realise the danger: “The truth is that we are all at risk now.”

shutterstock_306272309

Nigerian virus hunters in race against COVID-19 in Africa’s giant

LONDON (Reuters) &#8211; Britain’s economy could shrink by more than 14% this year and government borrowing risks approaching 400 billion pounds ($500 billion) if there is lasting damage from the coronavirus, government budget forecasters warned on Tuesday.



The Office for Budget Responsibility said its central scenario, with only moderate scarring, showed a 12.4% fall in output, with a 14.3% decline if scarring is deeper.



Under an ‘upside scenario’ &#8211; which it said was an update of the sole scenario it presented in April &#8211; output would fall by 10.6%, while government borrowing would be limited to 263 billion pounds.

UK economy risks shrinking 14% this year, budget forecasters warn

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa will introduce a universal basic income grant, the Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Zulu said on Monday, unexpectedly reviving a two-decades-old plan with the aim of supporting millions of unemployed.



The country already has one of the continent’s most generous social security nets, but the COVID-19 pandemic has added to the need both to protect its fragile economy and its high number of unemployed.



Zulu did not give details of how the grant would be funded or its size, but told a virtual press briefing it would be paid “post-October”.



Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the government had planned to spend 309.5 billion rand ($18.51 billion) on social security payments this year.



The pandemic prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce in late March a temporary top-up of those grants by up to 300 rand, including a 350 rand unemployment grant, lasting six months.



A universal grant had seemed unlikely, given soaring public debt and following an emergency budget that proposed sticking to 230 billion in spending cuts.



The treasury did not immediately respond to telephone calls and emails from Reuters seeking comment.



The universal grant will target around 33 million people between the ages of 18 and 59. South Africa’s poverty line, including non-food expenses, calculated by Statistics South Africa, is around 1,270 rand ($76.04). That would put the annual cost at roughly 42 billion rand, calculations by Reuters found.



Isobel Frye, director of the South African-based Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute and a Minimum Wage Commissioner, said the universal grant had been discussed by government over the last 10 months, but the treasury had been reluctant to fund it.



“It was unexpected but incredibly welcome. It suggests there’s been a lot of reflection about the inadequacy of the 350 rand COVID grant,” Frye said.



($1 = 16.7233 rand)

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South Africa to introduce universal income grant – minister

GENEVA/ZURICH (Reuters) &#8211; The new coronavirus pandemic raging around the globe will worsen if countries fail to adhere to strict healthcare precautions, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday.



“Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from the U.N. agency’s headquarters in Geneva.



“If basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go &#8211; it is going to get worse and worse and worse.”



Global infections stand at 13 million, according to a Reuters tally, with more than half a million deaths.



Tedros, whose leadership has been criticised by U.S. President Donald Trump, said that of 230,000 new cases on Sunday, 80% were from 10 nations, and 50% from just two countries.



The United States and Brazil have been worst hit.



WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan said some places in the Americas may need “limited or geographically focused lockdowns that suppress transmission in specific areas where transmission is frankly out of control”.



He urged countries not to make schools into a political football, saying schools could safely reopen once the virus had been suppressed.



Tedros said the WHO had still not received formal notification of the U.S. pullout announced by Trump. The U.S. president says the WHO pandered to China, where the COVID-19 disease was first detected, at the start of the crisis.



Trump, who at the weekend wore a protective face mask in public for the first time, has himself been accused by political opponents of not taking the coronavirus seriously enough, something he denies.



A two-member WHO advance team in China to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, first discovered in the city of Wuhan, is in quarantine, as per standard procedure, before beginning work with Chinese scientists, Ryan said.

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WHO warns of perpetual worsening of COVID-19 crisis

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa’s economy will contract by more than initially projected, likely shrinking 6.9% in 2020 compared to an earlier forecast of a 4.5% contraction, ratings agency S&amp;P Global Ratings said on Monday in a report.



South Africa has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Africa, with more than 270,000 infections, and 4,000 deaths, and is now recording the fourth-largest daily increase in new cases worldwide at more than 12,000 per day.



“The pandemic situation in the country has worsened since our previous macroeconomic update, leading to a further hit to confidence, which was already low before the pandemic, amid lack of growth and concerns about the fiscal trajectory,” the firm said.



S&amp;P along with the other two main ratings firms, Moody’s and Fitch, already rate the country’s debt at below investment status, or junk. S&amp;P cut its rating one notch to the third tier of non-investment grade, BB-, in April, with a stable outlook.



S&amp;P’s growth forecast is however more optimistic than National Treasury’s prediction of a 7.2% contraction this year. Treasury predicts debt to gross domestic product will breach 80% as government borrows more to fund its response to the pandemic.



To cushion the economic blow of the pandemic on the economy, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a 500 billion rand ($28.86 billion) relief package in April, equivalent to 10% of South Africa’s GDP.



“The sizeable fiscal package will only partially mitigate the economic toll, but coupled with lower revenues, will lead to a significant increase in government debt, further impairing public finances,” the ratings agency said.

money-bill-note-south-africa

South Africa’s economy to shrink 6.9% in 2020 – S&P Global Ratings

TUNIS (Reuters) &#8211; Tunisia has asked four countries to delay debt repayments, it said on Monday as it announced more pessimistic economic and budget forecasts for 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.



It is negotiating with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, France and Italy to push back the payments, Investment Minister Slim Azzabi told a news conference. Tunisia also hoped to arrange a new deal within four months with the International Monetary Fund.



The request on debt repayments underscores the dire condition of Tunisia’s public finances, already a source of concern before the coronavirus crisis pummelled the global economy.



Azzabi said he expected the Tunisian economy to shrink by 6.5% this year because of the pandemic. Tunisia imposed a complete lockdown from March until May and has gradually reopened since, though some businesses remain closed.



The pandemic is particularly hammering the tourism sector, which contributes nearly 10% of gross domestic product (GDP) and is an important source of foreign currency.



Tourism revenue in the first six months of the year fell by half from the same period of 2019 as Tunisia closed its borders and travel for Western tourists grew more expensive and complex.



The government, which took office in February after months of political wrangling following last year’s election, was already seeking to reduce the deficit and bring down public debt.



Finance Minister Nizar Yaich told the same news conference on Monday that he now expected the budget deficit to widen to about 7% of GDP from the 3% previously expected.

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Tunisia seeks late debt payments as crisis hits economy, state budget

ABIDJAN (Reuters) &#8211; Ivory Coast’s Vice President Daniel Kablan Duncan has resigned, President Alassane Ouattara’s office said on Monday.



Patrick Achi, the secretary-general of the presidency, told reporters that Kablan Duncan, who previously served as Ouattara’s prime minister, was leaving for personal reasons.



His resignation comes days after the sudden death last week of Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, who was also the ruling party’s candidate for October’s presidential election.

Newsletter

Nigeria’s NNPC fired 850 workers, many from refineries, oil union says

South Africa’s Sun International to issue 127 mln shares in rights offer

UK to purge Huawei from 5G by end of 2027, siding with Trump over China

Cecil Rhodes loses his head in Cape Town

Crisis-hit Moroccans join ‘informal economy’ as job market shrinks

South Africa’s TFG to raise 3.95 bln rand to cut debt

South Africa’s Distell plays chess to beat lockdown wine glut

Aspen offers to cut cancer drug prices, may avoid EU antitrust fine

South African Airways creditors approve rescue plan

How we can close the 28 billion dollar-a-year energy gap in Africa

Nigerian virus hunters in race against COVID-19 in Africa’s giant

UK economy risks shrinking 14% this year, budget forecasters warn

South Africa to introduce universal income grant – minister

WHO warns of perpetual worsening of COVID-19 crisis

South Africa’s economy to shrink 6.9% in 2020 – S&P Global Ratings

Tunisia seeks late debt payments as crisis hits economy, state budget

Ivory Coast vice president resigns, days after PM’s death

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Newsletter

Nigeria’s NNPC fired 850 workers, many from refineries, oil union says

South Africa’s Sun International to issue 127 mln shares in rights offer

UK to purge Huawei from 5G by end of 2027, siding with Trump over China

Cecil Rhodes loses his head in Cape Town

Crisis-hit Moroccans join ‘informal economy’ as job market shrinks

South Africa’s TFG to raise 3.95 bln rand to cut debt

South Africa’s Distell plays chess to beat lockdown wine glut

Aspen offers to cut cancer drug prices, may avoid EU antitrust fine

South African Airways creditors approve rescue plan

How we can close the 28 billion dollar-a-year energy gap in Africa

Nigerian virus hunters in race against COVID-19 in Africa’s giant

UK economy risks shrinking 14% this year, budget forecasters warn

South Africa to introduce universal income grant – minister

WHO warns of perpetual worsening of COVID-19 crisis

South Africa’s economy to shrink 6.9% in 2020 – S&P Global Ratings

Tunisia seeks late debt payments as crisis hits economy, state budget

Ivory Coast vice president resigns, days after PM’s death

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