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The baseline forecast envisions a 5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020 @WorldBank
World Of Finance
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24-FEB-2020 :: a “V- shaped” recovery #COVID19 [is a FANTASY]
World Of Finance
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Here are some growth forecasts for 2020. Brazil -8 US -6.1 India -3.2 Nigeria -3.2 Indonesia 0 China 1 Bangladesh 1.6 Egypt 3 @WorldBank @kaushikcbasu
World Of Finance
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Love this used car commercial @sarahcpr
Misc.
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“Anybody can be decisive during a panic; it takes a strong man to act during a boom.”
Market Crashes / Panic
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Global stocks tumble in brutal reminder of pandemic fear. Dow dropped 7%, suffered worst day since Mar. @Schuldensuehner
World Of Finance
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Just weeks after the stock market crashed in 1929, President Herbert Hoover assured the country that things were already “back to normal,” Liaquat Ahamed writes in Lords of Finance
World Of Finance
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Five months later, in March 1930, Hoover said the worst would be over “during the next 60 days.”
When that period ended, he said, “We have passed the worst.”
Eventually, Ahamed writes, “when the facts refused to obey Hoover’s forecasts, he started to make them up.”
Government agencies were pressed to issue false data. Officials resigned rather than do so, including the chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And we all know how that turned out: The Great Depression.
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Waiting for the Wave, Artem Chebokha, Digital, 2014 @ddoniolvalcroze
World Of Finance
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An Economic Policy that starts and Ends with Brrrrrrrrrr! Fast Forward
World Of Finance
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Major central banks' balance sheets: To infinity @dlacalle_IA
World Of Finance
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Rise of the zombies: the share of U.S. companies that have debt servicing costs that are higher than profits has continued to increase. From DB's Torsten Slok: @lisaabramowicz1
World Of Finance
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Morning view in Naru Moro. Photo by Stevie Mann @kenyapics
Africa
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Nairobi as seen from space. @kenyangeography Image c/o @esa
Africa
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“Look, boys, it ever strike you that the world not real at all? It ever strike you that we have the only mind in the world and you just thinking up everything else? Like me here'' V.S. Naipaul, Miguel Street
Misc.
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“Look, boys, it ever strike you that the world not real at all? It ever strike you that we have the only mind in the world and you just thinking up everything else? Like me here, having the only mind in the world, and thinking up you people here, thinking up the war and all the houses and the ships and them in the harbour. That ever cross your mind?”
― V.S. Naipaul, Miguel Street
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They fancied themselves free, wrote Camus, ―and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences. #COVID19
Market Crashes / Panic
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In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.
A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.
But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.
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The Athenian Plague, a Cautionary Tale of Democracy’s Fragility @NewYorker
Market Crashes / Panic
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In 430–429 B.C.E., Athens was devastated by a mysterious epidemic, which reared its head again a few years later. Tens of thousands of people died, perhaps as many as one-third of Athenians.
Society was ravaged, and the military, which was in the early stages of a brutal twenty-seven-year war against Sparta, was debilitated for many years.
The catastrophe contributed to Athens’s shattering defeat, in 404 B.C.E., by the loutish Spartans, who tore down the city’s walls and imposed a short-lived but murderous oligarchy.
Among those who died from this plague were Pericles and two of his sons.
Millennia later, the plague reminds us that the legacy of the eternal “wonder” of Athens contains within it a cautionary tale: the failure of democratic society to cope with a lethal epidemic.
The model of how democracy began is also a study in how it can founder and fall.
Most of what we know about the plague comes from the brilliant Athenian historian Thucydides, widely viewed by classicists as the single best source on Athens in the age of Pericles.
He would not be surprised to find his book being read today, during the coronavirus lockdown. “My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public,” he wrote, with zero modesty, “but was done to last forever.”
The book, although unfinished, established him as the founder of the systematic study of international relations.
It was translated into English in 1628 by Thomas Hobbes, and has since been cited by heads of state from Woodrow Wilson to Xi Jinping.
A 1994 article in the American Journal of Epidemiology rejected that diagnosis, proposing, instead, typhus, anthrax, or perhaps “a potentially explosive respiratory agent.”
Whatever it was, it was a horror. As Thucydides recorded with clinical detail, people suddenly felt their heads begin to burn, their eyes redden, their tongues and mouths bleed. Next came coughing, stomach pain, diarrhea, and “vomiting of every kind of bile that has been given a name by the medical profession.”
The skin turned reddish with pustules and ulcers, while the stricken plunged into the city’s water tanks trying to slake an unquenchable thirst—possibly contaminating the water supply. Most died after about a week. The city was blanketed with corpses.
Athenians were already packed into the city as a wartime measure, and frightened people fleeing the countryside crowded it even further, creating conditions we now know are ripe for contagion.
Orderly Athenians, no longer expecting to live long enough to face punishment for crimes, plunged into “a state of unprecedented lawlessness.”
They could not even bother to lay their dead to rest respectably. Instead, survivors looked for already burning funeral pyres, adding friends and relatives to the blaze.
And with the spectre of mortality looming at all times, they lived only for “the pleasure of the moment and everything that might conceivably contribute to that pleasure. No fear of god or law of man had a restraining influence.”
Many Athenians blamed the calamity on their Spartan enemies, spreading dark rumors of poisoned reservoirs. Yet Thucydides swiftly dismissed such speculation.
After all, Athens was a naval power, an imperial capital, and a trading city whose fleets ranged across the ancient world; the contagion, he wrote, probably spread from Ethiopia to Libya to Persia before finally reaching Greece, where Athens—a global port for commercial ships—was its first stop.
And, once it arrived, its damage knew no bounds, doing terrible harm to democracy itself.
In Plato’s “Republic,” written several decades after the plague, Socrates warned that democracy would decay into tyranny; Thucydides recorded it sliding into discord, folly, and demagoguery.
Only someone of Pericles’ intelligence and integrity, Thucydides wrote, “could respect the liberty of the people and at the same time hold them in check.”
His death left Athenian democracy in the hands of self-serving scoundrels such as Alcibiades, who later promoted an oligarchic coup, and bellicose demagogues such as Cleon, whom Thucydides scorned as “remarkable among the Athenians for the violence of his character.”
Politicians in search of scapegoats would be wise to recall Pericles, who said, before the plague, “What I fear is not the enemy’s strength, but our own mistakes.”His ancient empirical analysis of catastrophe offers a jot of hope, if not wonder: for as long as there have been plagues, there have been people, scared but tenacious, using reason to try to learn from them.
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In 430–429 B.C.E., a mysterious epidemic ravaged Athens, plunging the city into chaos.Art work by Michiel Sweerts @NewYorker
Market Crashes / Panic
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The Way We Live Now
World Of Finance
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A luminous and Fairy Tale feel
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Heavenly glow in the Amboseli. Photo by Harman Singh Heer @kenyapics
Africa
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Sunrise at Stonehenge on the winter solstice
Misc.
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Political Reflections
Law & Politics
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Even wider: the gap between #Biden and #Trump election odds. @jsblokland
Law & Politics
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A reality TV star botched the response to a global pandemic and now we are all imprisoned in our homes and forced to watch him daily. @JenaFriedman #COVID19
Law & Politics
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“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment & in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” Gen. Milley @jimsciutto
Law & Politics
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“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment & in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from & I sincerely hope we all learn from it.” Gen. Milley
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From 2011 to 2019, the number of riots rose by 282 per cent and general strikes rose by 821 per cent. @GlobPeaceIndex GLOBAL PEACE INDEX 2020
Law & Politics
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02-JUN-2020 :: Fast Forward the ‘’Slaves’’ are now in revolt.
World Of Finance
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A metastatic expansion of this Protest
Will they have that moment of Epiphany? Well There certainly has not been a more ‘’conducive’’ moment.
I would argue that Civil unrest levels are now globally at unprecedented levels that COVID19 was a circuit breaker and that ‘’Risk’’ is now blinking amber and that there remains a remarkable complacency around this risk which Paul Virilio described thus
Paul Virilio pronounced in his book Speed and Politics
“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street, where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine and itself becomes a motor (machine of attack), in other words, a producer of speed.’’
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Self Assured Destruction @EpsilonTheory
World Of Finance
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In the 1960s, our Cold War strategy evolved into Mutual Assured Destruction, a dangerous but stable relationship with the Soviet Union.In 2020, our Covid-19 War strategy devolved into Self Assured Destruction, a dangerous and utterly unstable relationship with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.Our arsenal is gone.
There will never be another coordinated national effort to control the spread of Covid-19. Not with this President, at least.
But that’s the problem with spasmatic policy and the blowhard leaders who administer it. You end up with neither a war-preventing strategy nor a war-fighting strategy. You end up neither containing the enemy nor defeating the enemy.Our leaders have botched this war, and we are defenseless against a still potent and now endemic enemy, left only with the deus ex machina hope of a truly effective vaccine.Frankly, I think 15,000 to 20,000 Americans officially sick and 500 to 1,000 Americans officially dead every day is a pretty optimistic scenario for an endemic Covid-19 in the months ahead.
Other countries, allies even, countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Germany, have waged their war against the virus much more effectively than the United States, so that a nationally coordinated policy of testing and contact tracing to manage an endemic virus without suffering ruinous daily casualties is at least possible.
But if it’s a bridge to nowhere …The free world does not easily survive a globally endemic Covid-19.
By 2027, Britain is the one civilized nation remaining, although it has transformed itself into a brutal police state to manage not just a fin de siècle, but a fin to … humanity.If it’s NOT true, if there is not in fact a vaccine that can eliminate Covid-19 as a globally endemic illness, then I think we’re in a full-bore Children of Men scenario. It’s a fetishization of the State and its provision of order, such that all economic and political behavior is funneled exclusively through the State and its crony capitalist “Yay, military!” and “Yay, stock market!” narratives. It’s smiley-face fascism. And not-so smiley-face fascism.Forget about the United States for a minute. Let’s say you live in India. Do you trust the Modi government to administer whatever vaccine stock they acquire with justice and fairness? Now do Brazil. Now do Egypt. Now do Mexico. Now do Indonesia. Now do Iran. Now do Russia. Now do China. Now do the United States....
how incompetent and/or pseudo-fascist leaders ALWAYS respond to this sort of domestic unrest and threat to the maintenance of their incompetent and/or pseudo-fascist regimes.
They start a war.
Not an allegorical “war” against a virus, but a real war against an Other. Sometimes that Other is a group or region inside their country. Sometimes that Other is another country. But it’s ALWAYS a war.
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16-FEB-2020 :: A Non Linear and exponential Virus represents the greatest risk to a Control Machine in point of fact #COVID19
World Of Finance
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02-JUN-2020 :: Fast Forward
World Of Finance
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However, what I am noticing is a metastatic expansion of this Protest
And therefore, The Control Machine which is obsessing with the Stock Market
And bailed out Humans to the tune of $1,200.00 for every $25,000.00 per Capita [and this is not unique to the US but is merely an example of a Worldwide Phenomenon].
Simply fails to comprehend that the ‘’Slaves’’ are now in revolt.
It is about the Haves and the Have Nots. Its about the moment of Epiphany when the Have Nots appreciate the predicament in which they have been placed and identify with each other rather than a ‘’boogaloo’’ structure that has been placed upon them.
Will they have that moment of Epiphany? Well There certainly has not been a more ‘’conducive’’ moment.
I would argue that Civil unrest levels are now globally at unprecedented levels that COVID19 was a circuit breaker and that ‘’Risk’’ is now blinking amber and that there remains a remarkable complacency around this risk which Paul Virilio described thus
Paul Virilio pronounced in his book Speed and Politics
“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street, where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine and itself becomes a motor (machine of attack), in other words, a producer of speed.’’
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The Markets are very complacent about A US China ‘’Hot War’’ 02-JUN-2020 :: Fast Forward
World Of Finance
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15 OCT 18 :: War is coming
Misc.
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“Wolf Warrior painter” Wuheqilin apparently fashionable with the young nationalist netizens of the new China. H/T @adam_tooze
China
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02-JUN-2020 :: Paul Virilo said ‘’Images contaminate us like a Virus’’
Market Crashes / Panic
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02-JUN-2020 :: Fast Forward a Put Up or Shut Up moment ‘’Wolf Warrior’’ Strategy all point at more intensity rather than less.
World Of Finance
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Hu Xijin ’This is the legendary DF41 ICBM. But it is not a tale. Today it is displayed at Tiananmen Square I touched one about four years ago in the production plant. No need to fear it. Just respect it and respect China that owns it’’.
China
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The World in the 21st century ex- hibits viral, wildfire and exponential characteristics and feedback loops which only become obvious in hind- sight. I would venture that Xi’s high water mark is behind him.
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A big global figure today pushes up the growth trend India⁴ overtakes Spain⁶ and UK⁵ today as expected. >+5%/day: South Africa²² Argentina³⁷ Oman⁴³ Iraq⁴⁸ Honduras⁶⁷ Nepal⁷⁴ Ivory Coast⁷⁶ Ethiopia⁹¹ @video4me
Market Crashes / Panic
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COVID-19 Daily confirmed cases
Market Crashes / Panic
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08-JUN-2020 :: 10-MAY-2020 We were trending in the 80,000-100,000 #COVID cases a day Newly reported cases reached a high of 130,400 on June 3.
Market Crashes / Panic
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Global daily new Covid-19 cases hit new highs of 136,757 @sunchartist
Market Crashes / Panic
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#COVID19 Worldwide, June 11 @Marco_Piani
Market Crashes / Panic
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Intelligence and Informatization: The Rise of the Ministry of Public Security in Intelligence Work in China @Comparativist
China
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The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos. Xi is building an Algorithmic Society.
China
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Xi has taken the propagation of ideology and the cult of personality to extremes not seen since the days of Chairman Mao.
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They now turn to rule over the people by means of what could be dubbed "big data totalitarianism" and "WeChat terror." @ChinaFile #COVID19
China
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You will all be no better than fields of garlic chives, giving yourselves up to being harvested by the blade of power, time and time again. @ChinaFile #COVID19
China
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Very interesting comment to my Medium article about the overabundance of synonymous mutations in the conserved Spike region possibly being a hallmark of a viral barcoding method. @ydeigin
Market Crashes / Panic
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01-MAR-2020 :: The Origin of the #CoronaVirus #COVID19
Market Crashes / Panic
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What is clear is that the #COVID19 was bio-engineered
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In order to bring them together, that bat/animal needs to circle the earth for 4 times. ZC45 in GuangDong. TG13 in YunNan. MP789 in Malaysia. Then you need to get a polybasic furin cleavage site that no SARS-like viruses (Lineage B) even have at all! @fl
Asia
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In order to bring them together, that bat/animal needs to circle the earth for 4 times. ZC45 in GuangDong. TG13 in YunNan. MP789 in Malaysia. Then you need to get a polybasic furin cleavage site that no SARS-like viruses (Lineage B) even have at all! Oh. MP789 is a lab construct.
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International Markets
World Of Finance
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08-JUN-2020 :: Anybody can be decisive during a panic It takes a strong Man to act during a Boom.
World Of Finance
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“Anybody can be decisive during a panic; it takes a strong man to act during a boom.” ― V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
“The businessman bought at ten and was happy to get out at twelve; the mathematician saw his ten rise to eighteen, but didn’t sell because he wanted to double his ten to twenty.”
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@RealdonaldTrump H/T @DanScavino
World Of Finance
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"We have gross oscillation here"
World Of Finance
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#www q an you i u re what we q NBC @neelkashkari
World Of Finance
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An Oscillation within Uyipa
World Of Finance
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Las Vegas is officially back. @ArashMarkazi
U.S. Economy
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The Markets believe it’s a V [but is it?] EXPECT MORE BRRR!
World Of Finance
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Markets driven by euphoria never end well. Warren Buffett is not an idiot. Fundamentals matter. @TaviCosta
World Of Finance
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Currency Markets At A Glance WSJ
World Currencies
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Euro 1.1307
Dollar Index 96.716
Japan Yen 107.15
Swiss Franc 0.9448
Pound 1.2584
Aussie 0.6863
India Rupee 75.9495
South Korea Won 1203.765
Brazil Real 4.9767
Egypt Pound 16.1767
South Africa Rand 17.1044
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Dollar Index 3 Month Chart INO 96.716
World Currencies
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Euro versus the Dollar 3 Month Chart 1.1307
World Currencies
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Moderna to launch coronavirus vaccine trial in July set to start a 30,000-person trial of its coronavirus vaccine in July, the company confirmed to Reuters.
Market Crashes / Panic
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The trial comes as the biotechnology company enters the final stage of testing for the potential coronavirus vaccine.
Moderna selected a100-microgram dose of the vaccine for the study, for which the primary goal would be to prevent symptomatic Covid-19.
The secondary goal would be the prevention of severe disease, as defined by people being hospitalized.
The company aims to deliver around 500 million — and potentially up to 1 billion — doses per year beginning 2021, Reuters reported. —Alex Harring
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MRNA vaccinepump H/T @NorthmanTrader @jessefelder
Market Crashes / Panic
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When will they develop a vaccine against stupidity? @NorthmanTrader
Market Crashes / Panic
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Commodity Markets at a Glance WSJ
Commodities
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22-MAR-2020 :: I still believe Gold will soon turn viral to the Upside I am looking for $2,000.00+
Commodities
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U.S. vaults are stockpiling gold after dysfunction in markets earlier this year. “Gold has reached America from all over the world. The flows into New York are unprecedented.” @WSJ via @lisaabramowicz1
Commodities
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Crude Oil 6 Month Chart 35.45
Minerals, Oil & Energy
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Another day, another brutal coronavirus tally in Brazil. Number of cases now above 800,000, at this rate will top 1 million in a week. Another 1,239 fatalities in last 24 hours pushes death toll above 40,000 - @ReutersJamie
Emerging Markets
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Brazil almost certainly leapfrogs UK tomorrow to #2 worldwide.
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10-MAY-2020 :: ―Brazil is the global epicenter of the coronavirus.
Emerging Markets
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In Brazil we have a toxic mix of a „‟Voodoo‟‟ President @jairbolsonaro and a runaway #COVID19
Brazilians aren‘t infected by anything, even when they fall into a sewer
“It‟s tragic surrealism ... I can‟t stop thinking about Gabriel García Márquez when I think about the situation Manaus is facing.” Guardian
Viruses are in essence non linear exponential and multiplicative and COVID19 has „‟escape velocity‟‟ in Brazil.
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Spreading coronavirus in Brazil — Far-right populist president Bolsonaro says that “Brazilians aren’t infected by anything, even when they fall into a sewer” @alfonslopeztena
Emerging Markets
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@jairbolsonaro "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free
Law & Politics
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10-MAY-2020 :: ― We are witnessing a Spill Over into EM and Frontier Geographies
Emerging Markets
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“There is systemic undercounting of deaths,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, a think-tank @FT.
Market Crashes / Panic
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“This may be seem like a good idea to manage public perceptions in the short run, but it is going to cost in the long term.”
The government has also banned the collection of coronavirus samples from untested dead bodies.
Doctors said the scale of the problem was terrifying.
“It is a scary feeling, the disease is rapidly going out of control,” said Kush Sharma, a doctor working at Lok Nayak Hospital, a designated coronavirus facility in New Delhi.
“In [intensive care units], we are used to mortalities. It is always painful but it is never been like this, where you lose three, four patients every day.”
During a normal week, they would lose two or three patients, Dr Sharma said. “It is absolutely traumatising.”
“[Officials] are recording just one-fourth of the deaths,” said an executive at a private hospital in New Delhi, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the government. “It is very clear, no one wants to know the numbers.”
India has the world’s fifth highest number of coronavirus cases — more than 276,000 infections and more than 8,000 deaths — despite a harsh lockdown that lasted months.
In New Delhi, graveyards and crematoriums are struggling to handle the number of bodies.
At Nigambodh Ghat, the capital’s biggest crematorium, supervisor Avdesh Sharma said they had received 15 to 30 bodies every day for the past two weeks who had died from Covid-19, in addition to their normal intake of 50.
“We are unable to cope with such a large number,” he said.
Haji Faiyajuddin, the head of the Ahle Islam cemetery, said he was burying four Covid-19 positive bodies a day, double the normal average.
“If these numbers continue, we will run out of burial space in this public graveyard in just a month, perhaps even sooner if there is a major spike,” said Mr Faiyajuddin.
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COVID-19: Shining the Light on Africa | The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene @AJTMH H/T @JNkengasong
Africa
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COVID-19: Shining the Light on Africa | The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene @AJTMH H/T @JNkengasong
While at this writing the number of cases and deaths in Africa remains relatively low, compared with other regions, numbers are increasing steadily, and fears are mounting of a major humanitarian crisis as transmission accelerates.
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Over 207,000 confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent - with more than 94,000 recoveries & 5,600 deaths. @WHOAFRO
Africa
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Africa's confirmed coronavirus cases reached the 100,000-mark in 98 days, then reached 200,000 only 18 days later, the World Health Organization has said @AFP
Africa
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"It took 98 days to reach the first 100,000 cases, and only 18 days to move to 200,000 cases," Doctor Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO's regional director for Africa, told a video briefing hosted by the UN press association in Geneva.
"Even though these cases in Africa account for less than three percent of the global total, it's clear that the pandemic is accelerating."
The novel coronavirus has infected nearly 7.4 million people worldwide and killed at least 416,000 since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.
Africa has reached 5,635 deaths from 210,519 confirmed cases, according to AFP's count at 1100 GMT on Thursday.
In Africa, "the pandemic is still concentrated in and around capital cities but we are seeing more and more cases spread out into the provinces," Moeti said.
She said that in most countries on the continent, the virus entered capitals through international flights from Europe.
- South Africa worst affected -
"Ten of the 54 countries in Africa are currently driving the numbers," Moeti explained, with those states accounting for 80 percent of cases.
South Africa accounts for nearly 25 percent of the continent's total cases.
"The majority of countries still have fewer than 1,000 reported cases," said Moeti.
"There is community transmission in more than 50 percent of countries, however."
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02-MAR-2020 :: The #COVID19 and SSA and the R Word
Africa
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We Know that the #Coronavirus is exponential, non linear and multiplicative.
what exponential disease propagation looks like in the real world. Real world exponential growth looks like nothing, nothing, nothing ... then cluster, cluster, cluster ... then BOOM!
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Africa's coronavirus "hotspots" in S. Africa, Algeria, Cameroon: @WHO #COVID19
Africa
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Africa will have a “steady increase” in COVID-19 cases until a vaccine is developed and strong public health measures are needed in current “hotspots” in South Africa, Algeria and Cameroon, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
“Until such time as we have access to an effective vaccine, I’m afraid we’ll probably have to live with a steady increase in the region, with some hotspots having to be managed in a number of countries, as is happening now in South Africa, Algeria, Cameroon for example, which require very strong public health measures, social distancing measures to take place,” Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa regional director, told a Geneva briefing.
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10-MAY-2020 :: The worrying development is Transmission Hotspots #COVID19 and the Spillover Moment
Africa
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Kano in Nigeria for example
Western Cape growing at an alarming rate @sugan250388
Someone with close knowledge of the medical profession said it was almost impossible to secure a hospital bed in several cities.
The Aga Khan hospital in Dar es Salaam had a well-equipped ward for 80 coronavirus patients, but several were dying each night, he said.
The Question for SSA is whether these Transmission Hot Spots expand and conflate?
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“Even though these cases in Africa account for less than 3 percent of the global total, it’s clear that the pandemic is accelerating,” Moeti
Africa
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Tanzania now expects its economy to grow by 5.5% in 2020 compared with a previous estimate of 4%, finance minister Philip Mpango said on Thursday @ReutersAfrica
East Africa
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Mpango said measures taken by President John Magufuli’s administration, especially its insistence that people should get back to work while taking health precautions, plus expectations about a regional and global recovery, will buoy growth.
The latest projection is more optimistic than the 4% estimate Mpango gave last month, but lower than an initial forecast of 6.9% due to the impact of the coronavirus on key sectors such as tourism.
“Real GDP growth is expected to slightly slow from the initial estimates of 6.9%, to 5.5%,” Mpango told parliament. “This is due to the impact of the COVID-19 which has spread in many countries which are our major trade partners.”
The projections are rosier than the World Bank’s, which said it expected GDP growth to drop to 2.5% in 2020 from 6.9% last year, citing the impact of the pandemic.
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10-MAY-2020 :: the African @jairbolsonaro is of course @MagufuliJP
Law & Politics
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@MagufuliJP via @joeruturi
Law & Politics
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Tanzania’s approach has been different. Rather than putting people on lockdown, we have put data on lockdown. @aeyakuze
Market Crashes / Panic
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Data, meanwhile, is under tighter control than ever before.
No data has been released on the numbers of Covid-19 cases or deaths since April 29, 2020.
The number of tests reported as having been carried out is just 652, compared to over 100,000 in neighbouring Uganda, 95,000 in Kenya and 75,000 in Rwanda by June 5, 2020.
Tanzania’s president Magufuli has spoken of the fear-inducing effects of data and the harm that this can do, and has cast doubt on the reliability of testing done at the national laboratory.
Night burials have stopped (or been stopped) and quarantine locations and hospitals are empty (or have been emptied).
On May 27, the Medical Association of Tanzania noted a significant reduction in Covid-19 cases, but did not provide any data to support their assertion.
When the data is on lockdown, such statements can be neither verified nor contradicted.
We seem to be pursuing a strategy of herd immunity. And we are doing it in data darkness.
An erosion of trust is a serious risk for a government looking for re-election in October, as is the case for president Magufuli’s administration.
More scientifically, modelling done by the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London was published on May 26, 2020.
Using official death data – from when Tanzania was still reporting such data – as a starting point, the model estimated the true number of infections in Tanzania during the 4 weeks between April 29 and May 26, 2020 to be 24,869.
If true, Tanzania would have replaced South Africa (with 23,615 cases) as Africa’s coronavirus epicentre.
The model’s estimates of daily deaths make for less alarming reading, suggesting that “if current levels of interventions are maintained”, by June 8, coronavirus related deaths would fall somewhere between four and 27 fatalities per day.
That is a small fraction of the average number of daily deaths experienced in pre-Covid19 Tanzania of 1,011.
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Health Alert: U.S. Embassy Dar es Salaam @usembassytz
East Africa
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The Tanzanian government has not released aggregate numbers on COVID-19 cases or deaths since April 29. Consequently, we are unable to provide specific guidance for U.S. citizens in Tanzania.
The Department of State has issued a Global Level 4 Health Advisory for COVID-19. For emergency American Citizen Services, including emergency passports, please visit our website for additional information.
Given the presumed ongoing community transmission in Dar es Salaam and other locations in Tanzania, the risk of contracting COVID-19 remains high.
The Embassy has recommended that U.S. government personnel and their families reduce movement outside of their home except for essential activities and limit the number of visitors entering their home.
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@Kalasinga_ Tanzania
East Africa
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SA #COVID19 UPDATE 11 June • Positivity rate at 10.5% today @rid1tweets
Africa
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South Africa’s manufacturing output fell 5.4% year-on-year in March, after contracting by a revised 2.3% in February, the statistics agency said @ReutersAfrica
World Of Finance
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South Africa All Share Bloomberg
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Dollar versus Rand 6 Month Chart INO 17.14
World Currencies
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Egypt Pound versus The Dollar 3 Month Chart INO 16.1587
World Currencies
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Egypt EGX30 Bloomberg
World Of Finance
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Nigeria All Share Bloomberg
World Of Finance
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Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg
World Of Finance
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Ethiopia’s economy is forecast to grow at 8.5% in the 2020/2021 fiscal year compared to a projection of 9% in previous period, finance minister Ahmed Shide told lawmakers on Thursday. @Reuters
World Of Finance
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09-DEC-2019 :: Time to Big Up the Dosage of Quaaludes
World Of Finance
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Rwanda’s response to #COVID19 has been swift and decisive. The IMF’s approval today of a further $111.06 million in emergency financing brings our total support for #Rwanda to US$220.46 million. @PaulKagame @KGeorgieva
World Of Finance
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How Three East Africa Nations Will Free Up Cash for Stimulus @economics
East Africa
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Governments in East Africa will ask for debt relief and implement new tax measures to free up money to help their economies cope with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Finance ministers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania on Thursday presented their budgets for the fiscal year that starts July 1, and while these three economies will continue to expand, growth will slow due to the pandemic and global and domestic measures to curb its spread.
Even with revenue under pressure, spending will increase for all three countries.
Kenya
The region’s largest economy has lowered tax rates for corporate and personal income, turnover tax, value-added tax and provided tax relief to low income earners and employees.
These measures will cost the government 172 billion shillings ($1.62 billion) in lost revenue, Treasury Secretary Ukur Yatani said. To recoup some of that, Yatani announced proposals to lower the level of exemptions.
“Whereas these tax incentives are well intended, they have limited the capacity of government to fund critical expenditures,” he said.
The International Monetary Fund last month approved $739 million from its Rapid Credit Facility for Kenya.
Uganda
Uganda will clamp down on tax compliance and raise some levies to collect more revenue for the economy and also to boost local industries and protect them against cheap imports, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija said.
The government expects economic growth of 4.5% in 2020-21 from an estimated 3.1% in the year ending June.
As Africa’s second-biggest coffee grower, agriculture makes up about a quarter of gross domestic product in the country that also produces tea and sugar.
The government has decided to raise import duties on farming products to 60% and exempt the supply of agricultural products and processed milk from value-added tax.
The IMF approved $491.5 million for Uganda from its Rapid Credit Facility for its response to the pandemic last month.
Tanzania
Tanzania is seeking as much as $272 million from the IMF’s Rapid Credit Facility and is in talks with bilateral creditors for debt relief, according to Finance Minister Philip Mpango.
The government, whose leader President John Magufuli has declared the country free of Covid-19, is also awaiting another $50 million from the African Development Bank.
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Kenya plans to borrow 823 billion #BudgetKe2020 @DanielMaithyaKE
World Of Finance
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Kenya’s finance minister Ukur Yatani set a budget deficit of 7.5% of GDP for the fiscal year starting in July, saying the coronavirus pandemic had upended the government’s plan to reduce reliance on debt @ReutersAfrica
World Of Finance
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“Our fiscal consolidation plan has been adversely affected by the events over the last six months,” Yatani told parliament as he presented the government’s budget, while also referring to the impact of a locust invasion and flooding.
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The rev projections r pie in the sky & cuts r unrealistic. This was the last budget for us to get real, forget big 4 & fix economy. Too bad! DEFAULT @WehliyeMohamed
World Of Finance
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The rev projections r pie in the sky & cuts r unrealistic. We are r treating this debt issue normally; why it will treat us abnormally. I gerrit, you gerrit but GoK can't gerrit. This was the last budget for us to get real, forget big 4 & fix economy. Too bad! DEFAULT
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It is the ECONOMY, stupid! @WehliyeMohamed
World Of Finance
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Ksh 366 billion of banking sector bad debts, looming sovereign debt crisis, massive unemployment, dead SMEs, unfunded pension liability, dangerous disease & its attendant economic problems etc. Ruto, BBI, Purge, Referendum etc are all distractions!
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Man, this feels a lot like a "business-as-usual" budget statement, with zero laser-focus on a long overdue overhaul of Govt expenditure patterns. @Ramah_Nyang
Kenyan Economy
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Kenya Shilling versus The Dollar @mosehesbon
World Currencies
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Nairobi All Share Bloomberg
N.S.E General
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Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg
N.S.E General
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Every Listed Share can be interrogated here
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