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Monday 14th of August 2017
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Morning Africa |
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Macro Thoughts
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Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga spoke to a crowd of supporters gathered in the Mathare area of Nairobi PHOTO: BEN CURTIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS Law & Politics |
Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga spoke to a crowd of supporters
gathered in the Mathare area of Nairobi, Kenya, on Sunday, in one of
his first public outings in recent days. PHOTO: BEN CURTIS/ASSOCIATED
PRESS
“This is a failed regime that is resorting to killing people instead
of addressing the real issue. The vote was stolen,” Mr. Odinga said
from a stage as onlookers scrambled from packed streets onto roofs,
cars and tree branches to get a better view. “We are not done yet. We
will not give up. For now I want to tell you: don’t go to work
tomorrow,” he added, sending a chorus of cheers skyward.
Mr. Odinga again offered no concrete evidence for his claim that the
election had been rigged in favor of Mr. Kenyatta, who, according to
Kenya’s Independent Electoral & Boundaries Commission, received 54.3%
of the vote, compared with 44.7% for Mr. Odinga. Election observers
from the European Union and the African Union have said the vote was
free and fair and there was no evidence of widespread manipulation, or
the hacking of vote tallies claimed by the opposition.
“Wait for the next course of action, which I will announce the day
after tomorrow,” Mr. Odinga told supporters, who call him Baba, or
dad.
It may be tough for even Mr. Odinga’s most ardent supporters to stay
away from work. Many residents from Nairobi’s poorest pockets were
already back at work Sunday after missing nearly a week’s living since
voting on Tuesday.
“I want to do what Baba says, but I have to feed my children, too,”
said Mercy Ochieng, who runs a stall that sells food and refreshments
in Mathare.
Still, she closed her stall for a few minutes to try to catch Mr.
Odinga speak in her community.
“I’ll just go see him quickly,” she said. “I am so happy he came to us.”
Conclusions
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The saddest statement of Raila's long career @TheStarKenya Law & Politics |
A fraud, a shame, a fiction, unacceptable. These were among the strong
words former Prime Minister Raila Odinga used in rejecting the
provisional results of the 12th General Election as declared by the
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission on Wednesday July 9.
The event was a Press briefing by NASA at the prestigious ABC Place,
Westlands, at which the principals tabled a 52-page statement that
shocked many observers not so much for what it alleged but for the
fact that it was raw copy, totally unedited. It alleged the grossest
electoral crimes, a hacking and takeover of the IEBC server and
falsification of the entire General Election outcomes at all six
electoral levels – Presidential, gubernatorial, parliamentary,
senatorial, the county assemblies and woman representative.
These are the gravest charges ever made in the history of Kenyan
electioneering. But instead of being made cogently, rationally and
grammatically by a campaign that had sophisticated electoral and
data-mining local and international consultants, it was the work of a
barely literate drafter.
The press statement rejecting the provisional Presidential results was
titled, in all caps, NATIONAL SUPER ALLIANCE
NASA PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN SECRETARIAT BRIEFING ON THE 2017
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, WE GOT THEM.
It was supposed to be the most important public statement of Raila
Odinga’s political career, short of a Presidential Inaugural Address.
But it was conceived and written in a frenzied hurry. It was what the
newsrooms call “raw copy”. It had no editorial intervention. It was
full of broken English, misspelling, spoonerisms and malapropisms.
On Page 7 we find the following paragraph: 11.We have uncovered the
fraud. Uhuru must go home. The IEBC must be fully accountable. The
will of the people is unstoppable. We had a superior one in the
Clouds.” That last sentence refers a server that is better than the
IEBC’s. It’s also a reference to the Cloud.
This is very sad indeed.
None of Raila’s expatriate or other strategists with a first-language
grasp of the English language looked at the text of this briefing. One
can picture them cringe when they eventually did so.
And long before the statement got to Msando, it had this: “e. At
12.41pm they set the RECRUSIVE TRIGGERS to OFF for database IEBC
PRESIDENTIAL_2017 (highlighted at page 4 of the attachment). Switching
those off ensures that the database would not keep record of anything.
Then the QOTED IDENTIFIER was switched to off to easily manipulate the
database. Then at the same time they switched the NUMERIC ROUNDABORD
to off . . .”
All three technical terms in capital letters are misspelt. The
RECRUSIVE should be RECURSIVE; the QOTED should be QUOTED; and the
ROUNDABORD should be ROUNDABORT.
It is useless to argue that the statement was issued at a time of high
stress and as a matter of national emergency. This is all the more
reason it ought to have been edited for grammar, punctuation and
correct spelling – the combined experience and statesmanship of the
NASA Pentagon and its strategists demands this. Any lesser standard is
negligent. Considering the stratospheric fees NASA must have paid its
consultants, both local and international, they had no business going
to Kenyans and the world with a raw copy message alleging a monstrous
electoral offence – no less than the heist of an entire General
Election results at all six levels of voting.
As the briefing put it, “6. They gained full entry into the IEBC
systems, acquired powers to write their will and dwarf the peoples’
voice. They created errors into the IEBC Core Server (as highlighted
at Page 2 of the document annexed to this statement) that allowed them
to turn a democratic process into a function of a formula.”
Again, this is a mangling of English unworthy of the big-name
consultants at NASA’s service.
For the attentive listener to and reader of that press briefing, it
was one of the saddest days of Raila’s career and the surest sign yet
that it had come to a halt, even if not, in fact, an end.
NASA will have to table tangible and irrefutable proof about its
gigantic claims or find ways of conceding defeat. What’s more, it will
have to demonstrate its own tallies for every contest and who it
thought won instead, including, for instance, the women winners
declared by the IEBC, especially the three first-ever women governors
and the three first elected women senators.
Conclusions
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14-AUG-2017 :: Finding the Off-Ramp @TheStarKenya Law & Politics |
As the dust settles, it is crystal clear that President Kenyatta
pulled off a serious political victory. The President's team out
thought, out spent and out manoeuvred the Opposition at practically
every turn. Mr. Musyoka's intemperate remarks that Central Province
should lie low like an envelope just twenty four hours before the vote
surely dialled up the vote in Jubilee strongholds. Mr. Odinga's call
for rent controls put every Owner on notice and I think that too was
an ill-advised call and underestimated the ''ownership'' Economy.
There are many Kenyans today who after years of graft own a piece of
the economy and they surely got nervous. It is time now for the
Opposition to skip a generation and this is said with humility. It is
also time for the Opposition to appreciate [once the trauma of losing
subsides] that there are two audiences. The first audience is its own
supporters, the second is everyone else. If You are going to argue the
case that a cyber crime was committed then for goodness sake find
someone who can make that argument credibly.
In fact, the Election had the potential to produce quite a bifurcated
economic outcome. Kenya stands in the Van-Guard of Free market
economics in Africa, it has taken more than 50 years to establish our
credentials in that regard. An Odinga Administration would have taken
a leftist tilt and the markets naturally were more aligned with
President Kenyatta and hence the very positive market reaction; The
Stock Market gained around 5% last week and Kenya's Eurobonds had
their best week in 2017. We need to build on that positive momentum to
crowd local and International investors into Kenya. What we have
learnt is that 5%-6% GDP growth [whilst better than most of Africa]
after being diluted by population expansion is not effecting
meaningful trickle-down. It was this fact [re-characterised as a
refrain ''You cannot eat GDP''] which the Opposition failed to
leverage, to their own chagrin. Therefore, we have to find a GDP
Off-Ramp, one where the Economy speeds up to 8% and more. Kenya has to
dash for growth, thats a sine qua non for the next 5 years.
President Kenyatta has to be Saint George in his second administration
and slay the corruption Dragon. I recall a period in 2002, when
Citizens performed citizens arrests of Policemen [for asking for
bribes] and marched them to the Police Station. It was a remarkable
moment and shows that it is possible to do something. A big Effort on
this front would release at least a $1b and more per annum and juice
the GDP move towards 8%. The President needs to consider how to
recapture that cathartic moment that we witnessed in 2002.
Infrastructure Spending like the Railway were absolutely necessary. If
we are serious about entrenching our Pivot/Transit State status [i.e
the Route to the Sea and the global markets for a number of adjacent
states] then we absolutely needed to make these big-ticket investments
in the Railways, the Roads, the Ports. Already President Magafuli has
proven a fierce competitor and his recent Oil Pipeline win shows that.
So these investments were necessary. Many commentators in my opinion
have underestimated the positive economic spill-over effects that will
arise from these investments. Today, Companies can tap into cheap
Power [Geothermal is one example], they can situate themselves close
to the Railways, they can export goods via the Railway to the sea and
to a 3b People market on our doorstep in the Indian Ocean Economy let
alone the Globe. We have a vast reservoir of good human capital that
is hard-working and these all are the magic ingredients for creating a
''Mekong Delta'' Economy that becomes an accelerant.
Debt is an issue. Its blinking amber. We can argue that at a ratio of
around 53% Debt-to-GDP we are comfortably within 60% [which was the
Maastricht criteria for the European Project, for example] but we have
now run out of headroom. We will need to eat more delicately at the
Debt Table. We will have to sequence our Big Dreams. We cannot do
everything at once. How we manage our debt will be important in the
2nd term. We need to aggressively interrogate ROI [Return on
Investment] so that we push those projects that have a higher and
quicker ROI profile. Tactically speaking, there is an opportunity to
unload more Eurobonds in the short term but over the medium term, we
need to now sequence better and bite off only what we can comfortably
service.
We need to now also call a stop to the endless Bail-Out ''Ground Hog''
day rigmarole. Kenya Airways was a ''National interest'' issue. If we
want to be a Gate-way to Africa and a hub, we absolutely needed a
national airline. There was no choice around the Kenya Airways rescue.
However, we know need to establish where that National Interest red
line lies and companies that fall on the wrong side of that line, must
be left to fail. This Government Put-Option has to end. One of the
most progressive elements of our economic Policy over the last 15
years was the privatisation Policy which saw its culmination in the
sale of Safaricom shares for 5 shillings way back in 2006. We need to
re-gnite that Program. Its a Silver Bullet. It gets GOK out of
business, it gives citizens a stake and those who have a stake tend
not burn things down. The secret of such a program is not to ''milk
the cow'' but to ensure that Citizens are sold shares at prices that
give them a profit. Optimal pricing keeps the Pipe flowing. There is a
Tsunami of cash to be tapped internationally and domestically but
never ever leave Citizens nursing losses.
Our Economy is not a mono-line economy. It is multi-faceted. It has
multi-dimensional promise from the ubiquity of Mobile Money to the
promise of the entrepreneurial spirit in every citizens DNA. I was
transfixed by the long Queues of Kenyans waiting patiently to cast
their votes and then I noticed a Fellow who had set up his own Coffee
Stand and I thought thats my Kenya. If opportunity comes knocking,
Kenyans seize it, we just need to ensure it comes knocking.
Finally, I liked the tone of President Kenyatta's acceptance speech.
You are indeed the President of 43m Kenyans. The President needs to
include everybody. Kisumu, for example, is about to receive a huge
investment from EABL. There are plenty more investments that we can
make or help others make. Its a Carpe Diem moment.
Over to you President Kenyatta.
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Meet Kim Jong-un, a Moody Young Man With a Nuclear Arsenal Law & Politics |
SEOUL, South Korea — In China, the man threatening to fire missiles at
the United States is often derided as a chubby brat. In the United
States, a senator recently referred to him as “this crazy fat kid.”
President Trump once called him “a total nut job.”
But the target of all that scorn, Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old leader
of North Korea, has long been underestimated.
Mr. Kim was the youngest of three sons yet leapfrogged his brothers to
succeed his father, Kim Jong-il. Many analysts dismissed him as an
inexperienced figurehead when he took power at 27; some predicted he
would never last. But almost six years later, there is little doubt he
is firmly in control.
South Korean intelligence officials say Mr. Kim has executed scores of
senior officials, including his own uncle, a wily power broker who had
been seen as his mentor. He is also assumed to have ordered the
assassination of his half brother, who was poisoned by VX nerve agent
at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in February.
Yet Mr. Kim is also credited with loosening state controls on the
economy and engineering modest growth, and regaining some of the
public confidence that the dynastic regime enjoyed under his
grandfather and lost under his father, whose rule is remembered for a
devastating famine.
“Smart, pragmatic, decisive,” Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at
Kookmin University in Seoul, said of Mr. Kim. “But also capricious,
moody and ready to kill easily.”
Mr. Kim first appeared in North Korean state media in September 2010,
little more than a year before he succeeded his father as supreme
leader. The reports said that he had been appointed a four-star
general and that the ruling Workers’ Party had elected him vice
chairman of the Central Military Commission.
Until then, it was not clear whether he would succeed his father. The
outside world had never even seen a photograph of him as an adult.
On his eighth birthday, Kim Jong-un was given a general’s uniform as a
gift, and from then on, generals paid their respects to him by bowing
before him, according to his aunt, Ko Yong-suk, who defected to the
United States in 1998.
“He learned how power works from early age,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a
professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.
In total, since taking power, Mr. Kim is believed to have executed
more than 140 senior officials.
“He moved quickly and ruthlessly,” said Daniel A. Pinkston, a
Seoul-based professor of international relations at Troy University.
“I think most people did not expect a man so young to be so proficient
at managing his dictatorship.”
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Trump threatens war and Tillerson promises no regime change. Law & Politics |
Trump threatens war and Tillerson promises no regime change. Remember
it was only a few months ago that Trump said he would be honored to
meet with Kim. The president's recent bellicosity aims for deterrence
and leverage.
In substance, if not style, this is very similar to how past
administrations have approached the Hermit Kingdom: threaten, cajole
and bargain. "This is Obama plus," Michael Auslin, a Korea expert at
the Hoover Institution, told me. "It's the same path of enhanced
sanctions with the potential carrot of direct negotiations and trying
to reassure our allies. There is not much different here."
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"The Russians are catching Venezuela at rock bottom," said one Western diplomat Emerging Markets |
Venezuela’s unraveling socialist government is increasingly turning to
ally Russia for the cash and credit it needs to survive – and offering
prized state-owned oil assets in return, sources familiar with the
negotiations told Reuters.
As Caracas struggles to contain an economic meltdown and violent
street protests, Moscow is using its position as Venezuela’s lender of
last resort to gain more control over the OPEC nation’s crude
reserves, the largest in the world.
Venezuela's state-owned oil firm, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), has
been secretly negotiating since at least early this year with Russia's
biggest state-owned oil company, Rosneft (ROSN.MM) - offering
ownership interests in up to nine of Venezuela's most productive
petroleum projects, according to a top Venezuelan government official
and two industry sources familiar with the talks.
Moscow has substantial leverage in the negotiations: Cash from Russia
and Rosneft has been crucial in helping the financially strapped
government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro avoid a sovereign
debt default or a political coup.
Rosneft delivered Venezuela’s state-owned firm more than $1 billion in
April alone in exchange for a promise of oil shipments later. On at
least two occasions, the Venezuelan government has used Russian cash
to avoid imminent defaults on payments to bondholders, a high-level
PDVSA official told Reuters.
"Thank you for trusting us,” Sechin told the crowd in Spanish during
the speech, broadcast on Venezuelan state television. “Russia and
Venezuela, together forever!”
Frontier Markets
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Kenya's elections show how the media has sold its soul @gathara Kenyan Economy |
In Francis Imbuga’s 1976 play, “Betrayal in the City,” the Kenyan
playwright and literature scholar describes life in the fictitious,
dystopian, post-colonial state of Kafira. One of the characters, a
university don, is jailed for speaking his mind: “We have killed our
past and are busy killing our future.”
As I write this, Kenya is busy killing its future. Once again, a
disputed presidential election has put the country on edge.
Further, on social media, the usually irrepressible collective that
calls itself Kenyans On Twitter (#KOT) is similarly subdued. Gangs of
Twitter bots are trolling the online streets looking for any reports
of protests on local or international media, branding them either
“fake news” or evidence of a nefarious plot by foreign correspondents
to incite violence for the sake of boosting their career prospects or
securing book deals. There have even been reports of police preventing
journalists from covering the demonstrations, confiscating equipment
and deleting footage, and even threatening to shoot them.
By law, the government is forbidden from advertising its achievements
in any media during the election period. However, this did not stop
Kenyan media houses from pocketing millions in the weeks before the
election for allegedly broadcasting illegal advertisements from the
President’s Delivery Unit, some of which even bore the tagline
“Jubilee Delivers” and “Uhuru 2017.” (Jubilee is the political party
of incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is seeking reelection.)
Imbuga’s play has an ignominious character, Mulili, who uses his
closeness to the supreme leader to secure corrupt advantages and to
sell out his countrymen. At the end of the play, Mulili’s duplicity is
laid bare and he is executed, signifying the passing of the oppressive
order and the birth of new hope. Similarly, Kenya’s media needs to get
out of Kenyans’ way so that they can get down to the business of
saving their future.
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.@StanbicKE reports H1 17 EPS -12.200% Earnings here Kenyan Economy |
Par Value: 5/-
Closing Price: 81.00
Total Shares Issued: 395321638.00
Market Capitalization: 32,021,052,678
EPS: 11.18
PE: 7.245
The Kenyan Banc assurance model includes CFC Bank, CFC Financial
Services and Heritage Assurance.
H1 Financial investments 68.571010b vs. 56.584125b +21.184%
H1 Loans and advances 133.516337b vs. 123.583059b +8.038%
H1 Total assets 234.258513b vs. 215.086376b +8.914%
H1 Deposits and current accounts 177.860070b vs. 158.033090b +12.546%
H1 Total equity 40.767786b vs. 38.327493b +6.367%
H1 Net interest income 5.012371b vs. 5.463276b -8.253%
H1 Non-interest income 4.156997b vs. 3.761122b +10.525%
H1 Total income 9.169368b vs. 9.224398b -0.597%
H1 Credit impairment charges [1.817986b] vs. [834.097m] +117.959%
H1 Income after impairment charges 7.351382b vs. 8.390301b -12.382%
H1 Total operating expenses [5.143485b] vs. [5.195869b] -1.008%
H1 Profit before taxation 2.207897b vs. 3.194432b -30.883%
H1 Profit for the period 1.737229b vs. 1.976643b -12.112%
EPS 4.39 vs. 5.00 -12.200%
Dividend per share 1.25 vs. 1.77 -29.379%
Cash and cash equivalents at period end 18.579702b vs. 31.393809b -40.817%
Conclusions
Solid set of results in the context of the new interest rate regime.
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N.S.E Today |
The market has found an Off-Ramp.
I said the following to Bloomberg Quint on August 9th
“The markets are seeing this accusation of massive hacking as a red
herring,” said Aly-Khan Satchu, who runs Nairobi-based Rich
Management.
“There is no smoking gun and hence the positive reaction. President
Kenyatta and Kenya’s free market credentials are burnished by what was
a very well-conducted election and I expect a serious upwards rerating
at the stock exchange. The shilling will remain robust.”
International Investors are expected to continue piling in especially
given what is an Africa-wide equity bull phenomenon.
Local Institutional Investors are horribly underweight the Equity
Market and heavily overweight the Bond Markets with some exceptions
[BRITAM is one such exception] and they will have to start to chase
the Train which has been leaving the station.
The Nairobi All Share surged +2.309% [its biggest percentage gain in
2017] to close 168.81 its highest level since May 2015.
The Nairobi NSE20 stormed 99.96 points higher and closed at 4076.94 a
22 month High.
Equity turnover clocked 802.56m.
Safaricom closed at a record and its market cap crossed a Trillion
shillings for the first time.
Today we witnessed bull market price action plain and simple.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom rallied +2.04% to close at a Fresh All Time High of 25.00
and this marks the first occasion that Bob Collymore's Safaricom has
topped a market valuation of 1 trillion shillings. Safaricom traded
6.749m shares. Safaricom is +35.61% on a Total Return Basis in 2017
and the near term price Objective is 28.00.
Kenya Airways rallied +7.61% to close at 4.95.
Uchumi continues it recent rally to close +5.95% at 4.45 a 2017 high.
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
Stanbic Holdings reported a -12.20% decline in First Half Earnings per
share, where Stanbic expanded Loans and Advances +8.308% and reported
a -12.112% decline in H1 Profit After Tax. Stanbic is paying an
Interim Dividend per share of 1.25 vs. 1.77 [-29.379%] last time.
These are a Solid set of results in the context of the new interest
rate regime. Stanbic Holdings traded 2,000 shares and all at 85.00
+4.94%. StanBic Holdings is +28.014% in 2017 on a Total Return Basis.
Equity Bank was the most actively traded share at the Exchange and
rallied +2.92% to close at a 2017 high of 44.00 and was trading at
45.00 +5.26% at the closing Bell. Equity traded 5.979m shares worth
264.474m. Equity is +53.33% in 2017 on a Total Return Basis.
KCB Group soared +5.84% to close at a Fresh 2017 high of 45.25. KCB
has served up a mouthwatering total return of +67.82% in 2017.
Barclays Bank Kenya spiked +8.96% higher to close at a Fresh 2017 high
of 11.55. Barclays Bank is +37.91% in 2017.
COOP Bank rallied +4.95% to close at 16.95 and traded 745,600 shares.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange surged +8.33% to close at a 2017 High
of 22.75 and is +55.29% in 2017.
Pan Africa Insurance rallied +8.11% to close at 30.00
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
KenGen rallied an eye-popping +7.03% to close at 9.90 a Fresh 2017
High and traded 3.334m shares. KenGen has soared +69.23% this year.
KPLC surged +7.88% to close at a Fresh 2017 high of 10.95.
KenolKobil ticked +0.93% higher to close at 16.30 and traded 3rd at
the Exchange with 7.156m shares traded.
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