27%
More American companies plan to increase their holdings of cash than plan to spend, in a reversal of sentiment that could signal fading hopes the Trump administration will implement policies friendly to business.
The AFP’s index of cash balance expectations jumped to plus 3 from minus 7 three months ago. The number represents the difference between the percentage of treasurers expecting to increase cash holdings and those who are expecting to decrease them. Contrary to the indications in January, the percentage of treasurers who said they actually reduced cash balances in the past three months was just 27 per cent, compared to 32 per cent who held them steady and 41 per cent who increased them.
$16bn
The prospect of high returns — matched by high risk — has brought more than $16bn in capital to Africa from specialist private equity funds since 2011. But optimism that this will finance development needs to be tempered partly because capital flows have slowed. Indeed, only $2.5bn was invested in 2015 and $3.8bn in 2016 compared with the 2014 peak of $8.1bn. More problematic is that the majority of financing is going to sectors in Africa that have limited or no positive effects on economic growth. For example, the extractive sector received $4.8bn, or 21 per cent, and the consumer sector $3.2bn, or 14 per cent and telecommunications received $5.7bn of all funds but do not stimulate structural economic change. By contrast manufacturing, a sector that is key to job creation and structural change in the economy, received a mere $0.6bn, or 3 per cent, of investments.
0%
Britain pioneered the use of coal to produce electricity when Thomas Edison switched on the world’s first steam-generating power station at Holborn Viaduct in London in 1882, providing electric lighting for surrounding streets and homes. One hundred and thirty-five years later, the country is leading the transition away from coal. Friday marked the first 24-hour period since the industrial revolution when no coal was burnt anywhere in Britain to generate electricity.
5%
Ghana’s central bank will not finance the government’s budget, its new governor, Ernest Addison, said on Friday as the regulator seeks to keep fiscal consolidation on track. Ghanaian lawmakers last year passed a law allowing the central bank to finance the deficit up to 5 per cent of the previous year’s tax revenues, breaching terms of a $918 million aid deal with the International Monetary Fund which demanded that such funding be eliminated.
$2.3m
South Africa’s public enterprises minister has blocked power utility Eskom from giving its former chief executive a 30 million rand ($2.3 million) pension payout, the government said on Sunday. Brian Molefe, who is largely credited with stabilising electricity supply following months of rolling blackouts, resigned last year after he was implicated in a report by the anti-graft watchdog on alleged influence-peddling.
