Novi Weekly Wrap Up - March 22 Edition

SI 33 and SI 55 were revoked

Two statutory instruments that were enacted in 2012 and 2013, respectively, were suspended because of "challenges enforcing them". SI 33 banned the quoting and payment for goods and services in foreign currency locally were as SI 55 authorized the central bank to monitor balance of payments. Have a look at the chart below:

Notice the reaction of the Kwacha as the minister was speaking at the press conference. Of course these instruments were not the main cause of sharp Kwacha depreciation but could they have had some part to play?

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Fitch affirmed Zambia's credit rating at 'B' with a stable outlook

It will be interesting over the next 9 months to see if the government can accomplish anything that could result in a ratings upgrade as outlined by the big three agencies. The last 3 quarters have shown that Zambia is now a full participant in global markets and are being "watched".

Copperbelt Energy Corporation announced results of rights offer
 
Part of the statement released by CEC:

"The Board and Management of CEC are pleased to note that the Rights Offer has been strongly supported by the shareholders of the Company and that the majority of shareholders opted to take up their entitlement of new shares with 95.95% of the offer subscribed for.
It is also noted that local institutional investment was particularly strong and the shareholding has increased in this regard since the institutions actively bought additional rights on the LuSE secondary market during the offer period.

Of the 625,000,597 shares offered, a total of 25,360,242 shares, or 4.05 % were not taken up by existing shareholders."

The shareholding structure stayed the same as before the rights offer.

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Minister of Tourism fired

The minister of tourism Sylvia Masebo was relieved of her position. A tribunal was set up to investigate a number of allegations and so far it does not look too good for her. Who will be the next minister of tourism? We'll probably find out next week.....

LuSE

The LuSE All Share Index closed Friday at 5,690.01 points up by 0.22% compared to yesterday's close of 5,677.53 points .One price movement was recorded in SCZ - K0.03 and ZAMBREW - K0.25 . Trading activity was also recorded in BATZ, CEC, LAFARGE and ZANACO . A total of 1,602,695 shares were transacted in 40 trades resulting in a turnover of K3,767,372.