Major International Business Headlines Brief::: 03 December 2019

Tue Dec 3 02:13:09 CAT 2019

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Major International Business Headlines Brief::: 03 December 2019

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*  Jack Dorsey’s planned move to Africa divides Square and Twitter investors

*  Trump just started a new trade war with … Brazil and Argentina?

*  Bitcoin Price: Cracking $7.4K Opens Path to $8.1K Resistance — Analyst

*  Accel closes new $550M fund for India

*  How to Get Solar Power on a Rainy Day? Beam It From Space

*  Bye-bye, recession: Turkey's economy returns to growth

*  India launches blockchain-backed solar trading

*  Many firms have no contingency plans should US-China trade war worsen, DHL survey says

*  South Africa regulator tells Vodacom, MTN to lower data prices

*  South African Airways in talks over funding for shake-up

*  South Africa's rand flat ahead of GDP figures

*  Kenyan shilling weakens on surging importer demand

*  Algeria's cereal import bill falls 12% in Jan-Sept

*  AfDB approves $210 mln loan for Nigeria's power transmission project

*  Bullish Bitcoin Chart Pattern Still Intact Despite 7% Price Drop

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Jack Dorsey’s planned move to Africa divides Square and Twitter investors

Jack Dorsey’s stated plan to move to Africa for up to six months is dividing Square and Twitter analysts.

The CEO of both companies said in a tweet last week that he plans to move to the continent for as long as six months. Payment analysts say the opportunity for Square could be tremendous, but they question who will run daily operations. For Twitter, it comes in an election year in which social media companies will likely face increased scrutiny.

Dorsey has already been in Africa for the past month, reportedly meeting with crypto entrepreneurs in Nigeria. He did not say which country he plans to live in.

Africa is ‘the future of payments’

Some Square analysts see Africa as an untapped and under-served market. African countries are still heavily cash-based, meaning digital payments and the popular Cash App could make inroads. Square could also bring merchant acceptance through the point of sale systems. Lisa Ellis, partner and senior equity analyst at MoffettNathanson, said an Africa expansion “fits tightly with Square’s mission to empower the individual entrepreneur and drive financial inclusion.”

What Jack Dorsey’s move to Africa means for Square, Twitter investors

“I can see products like Square’s merchant working capital, and the ability to purchase bitcoin and do fractional investing, having significant applicability in Africa,” Ellis told CNBC. “Someone still has to ‘mind the store’ at home, though.”

The region represents the “future of payments,” according to Macquarie senior payments analyst Dan Dolev. The move could be “very forward thinking” and an opportunity to learn that market in depth, he said. Dolev is also confident that Dorsey can manage both companies remotely.

“This could provide them with a strong perspective on Africa, and a first-mover advantage in a market that will likely be very dominant in payments over the next decades,” Dolev said. “I don’t see any issues, only opportunities.”

Still, investors will likely question how Dorsey will manage the day-to-day operations of Square while he is traveling. Ellis thinks he would likely need to name an interim president or COO of Square. It’s not clear who is the heir apparent and Square declined to comment on the move beyond Dorsey’s tweet.

In the tweet, Dorsey also mentioned bitcoin. The company has leaned into cryptocurrency, launching a dedicated crypto division of Square earlier this year.

Election year

For Twitter, the timing could be tough. The U.S. is entering a presidential election year in which social media companies will likely face scrutiny for their role in influencing politics. Dorsey’s absence could become a “lingering concern” for Twitter investors if Dorsey focuses on initiatives like bitcoin — especially during a year “in which the company finds itself in the middle of the potential political firestorm,” according to Dan Ives, managing director and equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities.

“The Africa tweet raises eyebrows for investors as Dorsey is the CEO and visionary for Twitter at a time the company needs him at the helm,” Ives said. “Dorsey has proven he can handle being CEO of two public companies which is a feat in itself, but investors are focused on Twitter further monetizing its advertising platform at a pivotal juncture which will make Dorsey’s African trip a scrutinized one by the Street if there is any speed bump.”

Wall Street has been hesitant about the long-term viability of a two-company track for Dorsey. The 42-year-old founded Square in 2009, three years after starting Twitter. He has led as CEO of Square since day one but his job at Twitter has been less consistent, moving in and out of the executive chairman role in the past decade. Dorsey took over as CEO for a second time in 2015 after Dick Costolo’s departure, and what was announced as an interim leadership role became permanent. Shares of Square are up 20% this year, while Twitter is up about 5%. Both stocks are down roughly 3% year over year.

Any challenges Dorsey faces going forward would be “compounded if he is nine time zones away,” said Michael Pachter, equity research analyst at Wedbush.

“He should either be a CEO or should be a world traveler — but don’t think the two mesh together well,” Pachter said.

Yale School of Management’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld said in order for Dorsey to leave the country for six months, he would have to formally go on leave and name an acting CEO — or at least a chief operating officer — for each company. There are also “constant” strategic, technological and financial decisions to be made on a regular basis that can’t be done remotely.

“Proximity matters for leading a company,” Sonnenfeld said. “Jack would be reckless and ego-maniacal as well as the board irresponsible and negligent, violating their duty of care under Delaware law, to let the CEO just go AWOL.”

Sonnenfeld pointed to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who took a couple long leaves for health reasons, but put then-COO Tim Cook in charge during his absence.

“A one-month break can be pushing it for emotional/personal R&R or intellectually recharging batteries and doing some market research, but six months is abdication,” he said.--cnbc.com

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Trump just started a new trade war with … Brazil and Argentina?

President Donald Trump returned from the long Thanksgiving weekend ready to open up a new front in his trade war.

On Monday, Trump announced on Twitter that the US would impose steel and aluminum tariffs on Brazil and Argentina in response to what the president described as the countries’ “massive devaluation of their currencies, which is not good for our farmers.”

“Therefore, effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel & Aluminum that is shipped into the U.S. from those countries,” Trump said, adding that he wished the US Federal Reserve should act so “that countries, of which there are many, no longer take advantage of our strong dollar by further devaluing their currencies.”

Though the self-proclaimed “Tariff Man” favors protectionist policies, the president’s decision to ramp up his trade feud is somewhat unexpected. In the spring of 2018, the Trump administration placed tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum on a slew of trading partners, including the European Union, Mexico, and Canada. (They’ve since been removed on Canada and Mexico as part of the USMCA deal.)

Initially, the Trump administration had also threatened other trading partners — including Brazil and Argentina — with those same tariffs, but ultimately struck a last-minute deal to avoid those duties. The administration limited steel and aluminum imports through quotas instead.

Still, according to CNN, after Canada, Brazil supplied the most steel to the US in the beginning of 2019. Last year, Brazilian steel exports to the US added up to $2.6 billion. Argentina isn’t as big a supplier, with just $700 million, per the Washington Post.

But now Trump wants to revisit tariffs, though his reasoning is confusing — and the push seems to have caught the new recipients of Trump’s trade ire off guard.

Trump wants to put tariffs on Brazil and Argentina. But why now?

Trump in his tweet accused Brazil and Argentina of a “massive devaluation” of their currencies.

But both Brazil and Argentina are dealing with their own economic woes. In Argentina, the right-leaning (and soon to be outgoing) Mauricio Macri administration has battled a financial crisis, including struggling to control the falling peso.

Brazil’s own currency has suffered recently, and what’s going in Argentina is partly to blame. At least according to Trump’s own Treasury Department, as of May, neither Brazil nor Argentina are on the watch list of countries requiring closer attention to their currency practices. Which means Trump’s tariffs could put more pressure on those South American economies, and their currencies.

Brazil and Argentina have both been sort of winners in Trump’s trade war with China. Brazil is now the top soybean supplier to China. Argentina also struck a deal to export soymeal (basically, animal feed) to China. But given the volatility of the China-US negotiations, and the pressure it’s putting on the global economy, it’s not clear how deep or long term such gains will end up being for either country.

Meanwhile, the politics of Trump’s announcement are a bit strange. Brazil’s new right-wing populist president Jair Bolsonaro has strengthened the country’s relationship with the like-minded Trump administration, and Trump had previously talked up a possible US-Brazil free trade deal. Just last week, Brazil’s economy minister, Paulo Guedes, had a bunch of meetings with US trade officials, including Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin. Ahead of those meetings, Guedes said Washington liked the right-wing Bolsonaro administration’s economic policies.

Responding to Trump’s tweet Monday, Bolsonaro said had an “open channel” with Trump and that he’d call him to talk it out.

“I’m going to call him so that he doesn’t penalize us,” Bolsonaro said Monday, according to Reuters.

“Our economy basically comes from commodities, it’s what we’ve got,” the Brazilian president added. “I hope that he understands and that he doesn’t penalize us with this, and I’m almost certain he’ll listen to us.”

Argentina, meanwhile, is currently undergoing a political transition; its right-leaning President Macri is leaving office, to be replaced by the left-leaning Alberto Fernández on December 10.

So Trump’s announcement definitely arrives at a bad time for both Brazil’s relatively new president — especially since Bolsonaro touted closer ties with the US as a selling point — and Argentina’s incoming administration.

It also comes at an odd time for Trump himself, as the president is trying to resolve the long-running trade dispute with China.

The US and China said they’d reached “phase one” of a trade deal in October, but the terms are still fuzzy and the agreement still hasn’t been formally inked. It’s not even clear if it will happen before the end of the year, and the Hong Kong protests may have recently strained relations even more.

Specifically, Trump signed a Hong Kong human rights legislation that overwhelmingly passed Congress, and Beijing is really angry about it. President Xi Jinping sees Hong Kong as an internal matter (Chinese propaganda has blamed the CIA and other Western institutions for fomenting the unrest), and Washington’s move as meddling in the country’s internal affairs. In response, the Chinese government has banned US military visits to Hong Kong and has sanctioned some US-based non-profits in the United States, which it accuses of fomenting the Hong Kong uprising.

The US is set to put an additional $156 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods on December 15, which would mean basically anything coming from China will be taxed. Trump said Monday that he’s “very happy where we are and frankly I could be other places that I could do all by myself and be even happier … but the Chinese want to make a deal.” Whatever that means, it doesn’t shed all that much light on where Chinese-US trade talks stand.

But Trump’s trade war with China has hurt some US manufacturers and farmers. More broadly, the US-China spat has rattled the entire global economy. And, of course, Trump is still waging a trade battle with the EU (though some of the recent tariffs were allowed by the World Trade Organization). He has yet to get his revised NAFTA deal through Congress, though there’s still hope there. And now, Trump is entering the 2020 election year adding even more volatility to America’s trade situation by targeting Brazil and Argentina. --vox.com

Bitcoin Price: Cracking $7.4K Opens Path to $8.1K Resistance — Analyst

Data from Coin360 showed the largest cryptocurrency trading in a narrower $300 corridor as the week began, with 24-hour performance bottoming out at around $7,180.

At the top of the range, BTC/USD nonetheless failed to retake $7,500, at press time fluctuating around $7,300.

The reduction in volatility soothed analysts, who were able to predict potential short-term moves for Bitcoin with a greater degree of certainty on Monday.

For regular Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, upside potential now focused on breaking $7,400, which could then form a gateway to higher resistance at $8,100.

Highlighting the current price point on a fresh chart on Monday, he added that a failure to maintain it would result in only a modest downturn.

“If we can't hold this purple zone around $7,250, I'm going to aim for $6,900 retest,” he wrote in accompanying comments.

Previously, van de Poppe had highlighted the fact that overall, the danger for traders were not over; markets could still continue selling pressure to send Bitcoin lower.

On the day, many were also waiting for BTC/USD to continue traditional behavior and fill a “gap” in Bitcoin futures trading prices.

A futures gap refers to the difference between when one Bitcoin futures trading session ends and another begins. On Friday, CME Group’s monthly futures settled $315 higher than the point at which they opened on Monday.

The historically accurate trend thus calls for Bitcoin to hit an area around between $7,465 and $7,800.

Altcoins fall in line as Bitcoin calms

Altcoin markets meanwhile broadly reflected Bitcoin’s flatter performance at the start of the week.

Ether (ETH), the largest altcoin by market cap, traded 1.6% lower at press time, just failing to preserve already weak support at $150.

Other cryptocurrencies delivered similar moves, with EOS (EOS) ad Litecoin (LTC) noticeably worsening their positions, losing 3.4% and 4.41%, respectively.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap was $199.3 billion, with Bitcoin’s share at 66.5% — 0.1% lower than the day before.--cointe;legraph.com

Accel closes new $550M fund for India

Accel,  one of the world’s most influential venture capitalist firms, is getting more bullish on India.

The Silicon Valley-headquartered firm, which largely focuses on early-stage investments, said today it has closed $550 million for its sixth venture fund in India.

This is a significant amount of capital for Accel’s efforts in the country, where it began investing 15 years ago and has infused roughly $1 billion through all its previous funds.

Anand Daniel, a partner for Accel in India, told TechCrunch in an interview that the VC fund will continue to focus on identifying and investing in seed and early-stage startups.

But the fund realized it needed more money so it could actively participate in follow-on rounds (later-stage financing rounds) of its portfolio startups. The announcement today follows Accel’s similar recent push in Europe and Israel, where it closed a $575 million fund.

“We also selectively do growth investments for companies that are scaling well, such as Swiggy, UrbanClap, BlackStone and Bounce. We have continued to back them through Series B and Series C rounds,” he said.

Like in many other markets, Accel’s track record in India is quite impressive. It participated in the seed financing round of e-commerce firm Flipkart,  which was then valued at $4 million post-money. Walmart bought a majority stake in Flipkart last year for $16 billion. (This helped Accel net more than $1 billion in return from Flipkart.)

Accel, which has nine partners and more than 50 members in total in India, also invested in the seed round of SaaS giant Freshworks,  which is now valued at more than $3 billion, food delivery startup Swiggy, also valued at north of $3 billion, and recently turned unicorn BlackBuck. Accel has been the first institutional investor for 85% of startups in its portfolio.

The VC firm says 44 of the 100-odd startups in its India portfolio today are valued at over $100 million each. In total, including Flipkart’s $21 billion market value, Accel’s portfolio firms have created $44 billion in market value.

Some of the investments Accel has made in India

“When we started our first fund in India in 2005, the world was a very different place. Just 1 in 50 Indians had access to the internet and mobile phone ownership was nascent. Yet we firmly believed that India was on the cusp of a big change,” the firm said in a statement.

“Today, the opportunity ahead is significantly bigger than when we started in 2005: India can now digitally identify 1.3 billion people, has 600 million internet users and 150 million online transacting customers with a national payments platform that processes $20 billion a month.”

Daniel said moving forward Accel will continue to focus on consumer, business-to-business, fintech, healthcare and global SaaS categories. “We have nine partners with their own areas of interest. They invest from their own conviction and finance seed rounds. If we see a particular sector evolving, then we do a deeper thesis work,” he said.

“We then develop deeper confidence for the space. For example, back in the day we invested in mobility startup TaxiForSure, long before Uber  had arrived in India. That helped us understand mobility well. We have used those learnings to invest in several more mobility startups.”

Accel’s growing interest in India comes at a time when several other giants, including SoftBank  and Prosus Ventures, have also become more active in the nation — though they tend to finance later-stage rounds.

For Indian startups that are already having their best year, this can only be good news.--techcrunch.com

How to Get Solar Power on a Rainy Day? Beam It From Space

Earlier this year, a small group of spectators gathered in David Taylor Model Basin, the Navy’s cavernous indoor wave pool in Maryland, to watch something they couldn’t see. At each end of the facility there was a 13-foot pole with a small cube perched on top. A powerful infrared laser beam shot out of one of the cubes, striking an array of photovoltaic cells inside the opposite cube. To the naked eye, however, it looked like a whole lot of nothing. The only evidence that anything was happening came from a small coffee maker nearby, which was churning out “laser lattes” using only the power generated by the system.

The laser setup managed to transmit 400 watts of power—enough for several small household appliances—through hundreds of meters of air without moving any mass. The Naval Research Lab, which ran the project, hopes to use the system to send power to drones during flight. But NRL electronics engineer Paul Jaffe has his sights set on an even more ambitious problem: beaming solar power to Earth from space. For decades the idea had been reserved for The Future, but a series of technological breakthroughs and a massive new government research program suggest that faraway day may have finally arrived.

Since the idea for space solar power first cropped up in Isaac Asimov’s science fiction in the early 1940s, scientists and engineers have floated dozens of proposals to bring the concept to life, including inflatable solar arrays and robotic self-assembly. But the basic idea is always the same: A giant satellite in orbit harvests energy from the sun and converts it to microwaves or lasers for transmission to Earth, where it is converted into electricity. The sun never sets in space, so a space solar power system could supply renewable power to anywhere on the planet, day or night, rain or shine.

Like fusion energy, space-based solar power seemed doomed to become a technology that was always 30 years away. Technical problems kept cropping up, cost estimates remained stratospheric, and as solar cells became cheaper and more efficient, the case for space-based solar seemed to be shrinking.

That didn’t stop government research agencies from trying. In 1975, after partnering with the Department of Energy on a series of space solar power feasibility studies, NASA beamed 30 kilowatts of power over a mile using a giant microwave dish. Beamed energy is a crucial aspect of space solar power, but this test remains the most powerful demonstration of the technology to date. “The fact that it’s been almost 45 years since NASA’s demonstration, and it remains the high-water mark, speaks for itself,” Jaffe says. “Space solar wasn’t a national imperative, and so a lot of this technology didn’t meaningfully progress.”

John Mankins, a former physicist at NASA and director of Solar Space Technologies, witnessed how government bureaucracy killed space solar power development firsthand. In the late 1990s, Mankins authored a report for NASA that concluded it was again time to take space solar power seriously and led a project to do design studies on a satellite system. Despite some promising results, the agency ended up abandoning it.

In 2005, Mankins left NASA to work as a consultant, but he couldn’t shake the idea of space solar power. He did some modest space solar power experiments himself and even got a grant from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program in 2011. The result was SPS-ALPHA, which Mankins called “the first practical solar power satellite.” The idea, says Mankins, was “to build a large solar-powered satellite out of thousands of small pieces.” His modular design brought the cost of hardware down significantly, at least in principle.

Jaffe, who was just starting to work on hardware for space solar power at the Naval Research Lab, got excited about Mankins’ concept. At the time he was developing a “sandwich module” consisting of a small solar panel on one side and a microwave transmitter on the other. His electronic sandwich demonstrated all the elements of an actual space solar power system and, perhaps most important, it was modular. It could work beautifully with something like Mankins' concept, he figured. All they were missing was the financial support to bring the idea from the laboratory into space.

Jaffe invited Mankins to join a small team of researchers entering a Defense Department competition, in which they were planning to pitch a space solar power concept based on SPS-ALPHA. In 2016, the team presented the idea to top Defense officials and ended up winning four out of the seven award categories. Both Jaffe and Mankins described it as a crucial moment for reviving the US government’s interest in space solar power.

They might be right. In October, the Air Force Research Lab announced a $100 million program to develop hardware for a solar power satellite. It’s an important first step toward the first demonstration of space solar power in orbit, and Mankins says it could help solve what he sees as space solar power’s biggest problem: public perception. The technology has always seemed like a pie-in-the-sky idea, and the cost of setting up a solar array on Earth is plummeting. But space solar power has unique benefits, chief among them the availability of solar energy around the clock regardless of the weather or time of day.

It can also provide renewable energy to remote locations, such as forward operating bases for the military. And at a time when wildfires have forced the utility PG&E to kill power for thousands of California residents on multiple occasions, having a way to provide renewable energy through the clouds and smoke doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. (Ironically enough, PG&E entered a first-of-its-kind agreement to buy space solar power from a company called Solaren back in 2009; the system was supposed to start operating in 2016 but never came to fruition.)

“If space solar power does work, it is hard to overstate what the geopolitical implications would be,” Jaffe says. “With GPS, we sort of take it for granted that no matter where we are on this planet, we can get precise navigation information. If the same thing could be done for energy, it would be revolutionary.”

Indeed, there seems to be an emerging race to become the first to harness this technology. Earlier this year China announced its intention to become the first country to build a solar power station in space, and for more than a decade Japan has considered the development of a space solar power station to be a national priority. Now that the US military has joined in with a $100 million hardware development program, it may only be a matter of time before there’s a solar farm in the solar system.--wired.com

Bye-bye, recession: Turkey's economy returns to growth

The government is forecasting that economic growth will return to five percent next year.

Turkey's economy shook off recession to grow 0.9 percent in the three months ending in September from the same period the year before. The data, released on Monday, broke three straight quarters of contraction that followed last year's currency crisis.

Turkey has a track record of five percent growth, but a 30 percent slide in the lira last year pushed up inflation and interest rates, while domestic demand tumbled. The central bank has since slashed borrowing costs to revive activity.

Monday's data was roughly in line with a Reuters News Agency poll that forecast one percent year-on-year expansion in the third quarter. The poll also predicted that the economy will grow 0.5 percent in 2019 as a whole.

The government has forecast 0.5 percent growth for this year and five percent growth in 2020. Finance Minister Berat Albayrak wrote on Twitter that leading indicators for the fourth quarter showed growth momentum continues to increase.

But economists say achieving the government's target could prove difficult.

"The key issue for me is that there is still not that much confidence among households and corporates," said Piotr Matys, emerging markets foreign exchange strategist at Rabobank.

He said authorities needed to make significant progress on economic reforms to restore confidence amongst investors and locals, with efforts so far having focused mainly on short-term solutions.

The third-quarter growth was driven by the agricultural sector, which expanded 3.8 percent, while industry grew 1.6 percent and services grew 0.6 percent. However, the construction sector, which underpinned years of strong economic growth in Turkey, shrank 7.8 percent, according to data from the government-run Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK).

The lira stood at 5.7550 against the dollar after the data's release, weakening from 5.74 beforehand.

Compared to the second quarter, gross domestic product expanded by a seasonally and calendar-adjusted 0.4 percent, its third positive quarter-on-quarter reading in a row, TUIK data showed.

QNB Finansbank said in a note that private consumption was the major driver of growth quarter-on-quarter, but that its contribution had weakened.

TUIK said exports increased 5.1 percent year-on-year in the quarter, while imports grew 7.6 percent.

As the economy has recovered, inflation tumbled to single digits in October due to base effects, and loan growth picked up thanks to central bank rate cuts. In the second quarter, the economy shrank a revised 1.6 percent from the previous year.

In late October, the central bank slashed interest rates more than expected to 14 percent, continuing an aggressive bout of cuts from 24 percent since July to help revive the recession-hit economy.

The central bank governor subsequently said the bank had used a significant part of its leeway for loosening monetary policy. Last week, he said the bank will use required reserves to support real-sector access to loans and loan growth.

A business survey on Monday showed Turkish manufacturing activity contracted in November as new orders slowed although output picked up. The purchasing managers' index for manufacturing rose to 49.5 from 49.0 in October, said the Istanbul Chamber of Industry and IHS Markit.

"The economic confidence index and its components suggest a broad-based recovery in economic activity in Q4," the QNB Finansbank note said.

Trade data on Monday showed exports were flat in November, with imports jumping 9.2 percent, resulting in a tripling of the trade deficit to $2.15bn.----aljazeera.com

India launches blockchain-backed solar trading

Uttar Pradesh (UP) is India’s most populous state, not to mention the most populous country subdivision in the world. UP is piloting a blockchain-based platform that will allow residents there to trade energy from solar panels between themselves.

As Decrypt explains:

Two state-owned companies — Uttar Pradesh New and Renewable Energy Development Agency (UPNEDA) and Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation (UPPCL) — will run the pilot, using energy generated from solar panels on top of government buildings.

The state has partnered with India Smart Grid Forum [ISGF], a public/private partnership run by India’s Ministry for Power, and Australian tech company Power Ledger for the project.

The first phase of the pilot will be completed by March. The results will be used to devise a public policy on peer-to-peer trading of solar energy.

Power Ledger’s platform is already being used in the US, Japan, and Austria.

ISGF’s executive director, Reena Suri, says:

It will enable households to set prices, track energy trading in real-time, and enable the settlement of surplus solar transactions in real-time through smart contracts executed on blockchain.

In April 2019, James Ellsmoor, a sustainable development consultant and founder of the Virtual Island Summit, wrote for Forbes that blockchain is capable of driving innovation in green energy and technology because it promotes transparency and information sharing.

Ellsmoor cites Yvo Hunink of the City of The Hague, who gave an example of how trading green energy could work:

A biomass plant owned by a farmer in rural India could start delivering the backup power to the grid as soon as the central grid fails, for a price that may vary dynamically according to the rest of available energy in the system. If the blackout is during the day, many solar panels would also be able to cover the load, however, at night, the biomass plant operator has better leverage to sell his energy for a higher price. The market dynamics of supply and demand could all be automatically contracted within a smart contract blockchain environment.

Electrek’s Take

As our publisher, Seth Weintraub, rightfully observed when our team saw this announcement, “Instead of using energy to make money, you are making energy to make money. Guess which one is more sustainable?”

Blockchain has no central authority — it’s the ultimate democratized system. Uttar Pradesh has a population of more than 200 million. So the potential for this initiative to both empower the population and also promote green energy is immense.

India is one of the three largest carbon emitters in the world (along with the US and China), so it needs to step up its commitment to green energy in a big way.--eletrek.com

Many firms have no contingency plans should US-China trade war worsen, DHL survey says

As the U.S.-China trade war drags into its 16th month and continues to disrupt supply chains, more than one-quarter of multinational firms have not made contingency plans, showed a survey from a subsidiary of courier giant DHL.

The survey by DHL Resilience360, a supply chain risk management software platform under Deutsche Post’s courier unit, included 267 anonymous responses from supply chain executives across industries including healthcare, automotive and consumer.

Over half of respondents were from companies with annual revenue of over 1 billion yuan ($142 million) and most were from the United States and European Union, the survey showed.

Of respondents, 48% from the engineering and manufacturing industry and 40% from the automotive mobility sector reported that they had no contingency plans at all, even though both fields have been heavily targeted by both countries in the trade war.

“We’re now dealing with such a new frontier that most supply chain professionals have not encountered this before and its so new that I think a lot of people are struggling to even understand what they can do to deal with it,” said Shehrina Kamal, product director for risk monitoring at DHL Resilience360.

Of those that had decided against relocating or shifting production out of China, some said they were unaffected by the trade war. However, 43% said long-established connections with Chinese factories and suppliers as well cost and time were among reasons for staying put. Just 8% of respondents said they expected tariffs to eventually be removed.

Of the 12% of respondents that have moved manufacturing out of China, some said they faced headaches such as a lack of skilled labor, heavy port congestion and maintaining supplier quality, the survey showed. India and Vietnam were among the most popular alternative locations.

The United States and China have imposed tariffs on billions of dollars worth of each other’s goods since July 2018 as trade friction between the world’s two biggest economies worsened despite several rounds of negotiation. Industries that have been hit so far include automotive, retail and technology.

A “phase one” deal that would cool trade tension and roll back some of the tariffs had been expected in November but has yet to be agreed.

The disruption has led other Asian countries to compete for investment from companies moving supply chains to escape higher tariffs, with governments offering tax breaks, promising to slash red tape and sending trade missions.

($1 = 7.0389 Chinese yuan renminbi)--cnbc.com

South Africa regulator tells Vodacom, MTN to lower data prices

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa’s Vodacom Group and MTN Group could face prosecution if they do not agree with the Competition Commission in the next two months to lower data prices, the watchdog said in findings from an inquiry published on Monday.

The data services inquiry was launched in August 2017 in response to a request from the minister of economic Development and after complaints from consumers about high data costs.

In its final report, the Commission recommended that the two mobile operators must independently reach agreement with the competition watchdog on substantial reductions on tariff levels, especially prepaid monthly bundles, within two months of the release of the report.

It said the preliminary evidence suggests that there is scope for price reductions in the region of 30% to 50%.

The mobile operators must also reach agreement “to cease ongoing partitioning and price discrimination strategies that may facilitate greater exploitation of market power and anti-poor pricing.”

“With respect to the above recommendations on the level and structure of pricing, should an operator fail to reach the required agreements with the Commission within the specified timeframes, the Commission will proceed to prosecution under the appropriate sections of the Act,” The Commission said in a summary of its report.

South African Airways in talks over funding for shake-up

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African Airways (SAA) and lenders have had “intense discussions” to secure funds for the cash-strapped carrier’s operational and structural transition, the country’s public enterprises ministry said on Sunday.

SAA, which hasn’t made a profit since 2011 and is dependent on government bailouts to remain solvent, was hit last month by a crippling strike that pushed it to the brink of collapse.

The department, headed by minister Pravin Gordhan, issued a statement saying that the struggling state-owned airline could not continue in its present form and would need a “radical restructuring” to ensure financial and operational sustainability.

“Over the past few days there have been intense discussions with lenders to secure the necessary funds to cover the operational and structural transition over the next few months,” the ministry said.

The ministry is pursuing various options to turn around SAA, it added without providing further detail.

SAA last month said it could cut more than 900 jobs as it looks to stem severe financial losses.

Its financial position worsened dramatically after Nov. 15, when two of its largest unions began an eight-day strike over pay that forced SAA to cancel hundreds of flights.

In another blow, two large travel insurers in South Africa on Friday stopped covering SAA tickets against insolvency as doubts grow over whether the airline can survive.

South Africa's rand flat ahead of GDP figures

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa’s rand was flat in early trade on Monday ahead of third quarter growth data expected to show Africa’s most developed economy barely expanded.

At 0730 GMT the rand was 0.01% firmer at 14.6690 per dollar.

Statistics SA publishes third quarter gross domestic figures on Tuesday at 0930 GMT. A Reuters poll of economists and analysts sees quarter-on-quarter expansion at 0.1% from 3.1% previously, while year-on-year growth is forecast at only 0.4%.

Low growth and its impact on government revenue has seen the country’s credit rating slide in recent years while public debt and unemployment have soared. However, the rand has largely weathered those concerns due mainly to the high yield on offer.

Bonds weakened, with the yield on the benchmark paper due in 2026 adding 2 basis points to 8.475%.

Kenyan shilling weakens on surging importer demand

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The Kenyan shilling was under pressure on Monday as strong dollar demand by merchandise importers outstripped inflows from non-governmental organisations, traders said. At 0852 GMT, commercial banks quoted the shilling at 102.55/75 per dollar, compared with 102.45/65 at Friday’s close.

Algeria's cereal import bill falls 12% in Jan-Sept

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria’s spending on imports of cereals dropped 12% in the first nine months of 2019 compared with the same period last year, official data showed on Saturday.

Algeria, one of the world’s biggest grain importers, has been trying to cut expenditure on purchases of cereals and other goods after a fall in energy earnings.

The government this month decided to reduce its soft wheat imports to 4 million tonnes a year, from the current 6.2 million tonnes.

The value of imports of cereals reached $2.1 billion in the nine months to September 30, down from $2.4 billion in the year-earlier period, according to customs figures.

AfDB approves $210 mln loan for Nigeria's power transmission project

LAGOS (Reuters) - The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a $210 million loan to help Nigeria upgrade its dilapidated electricity transmission and distribution network.

The loan to Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) will support construction of 330KV double circuit quad transmission lines and sub-stations across the country, the bank said in a statement late on Friday.

The AfDB funded project will run across seven states and will improve the capacity of power grid where it is most constrained.  

Nigeria privatised most of its power sector in 2013 but retained control of its monopoly grid, operated by TCN. Most of the country’s power generation is from thermal power stations that use gas.

The creaking power grid has often been blamed for hobbling growth in west Africa’s largest economy.

AfDB’s acting vice president for Power & Energy, Wale Shonibare said implementing the project would increase evacuation from the south towards the north, where power supply is limited.

The project would also improve power export and regional power system integration to the West African Power pool, especially through Niger and Benin interconnections, he said.

The country’s power output stands at around 4,000 MW, the Nigeria Electricity System Operator has said. Total power generation capacity is about 7,000 MW but the transmission network cannot cope if plants operate at full tilt.

Nigeria’s privatized power sector typically does not use meters to provide invoices, bill collections are low and energy tariffs have remained fixed for three years.

The effect, say industry experts, is that electricity distribution companies recover so little revenue from customers that they pay less than a third of what they owe to generating companies - leaving the sector with ballooning debts.

Bullish Bitcoin Chart Pattern Still Intact Despite 7% Price Drop

Bitcoin has erased more than 45 percent of last week's rally, but the outlook remains bullish with prices holding above three-day chart support at $6,847.

A re-test of trendline resistance at $7,665 looks likely. A violation there would expose Friday's high of $7,870.

Acceptance below $6,847 would invalidate a bullish reversal pattern on the three-day chart and expose the recent low of $6,515. That looks unlikely, though, with the MACD histogram turning bullish above zero.

Bitcoin has pulled back sharply over the last 48 hours, but is holding well above support near $6,850 keeping the short-term bullish bias intact.

The top cryptocurrency is currently trading near $7,330, representing a 7.3 percent drop from the high of $7,870 registered on Friday.

With the pullback, bitcoin has erased more than 45 percent of the corrective rally from the six-month low of $6,515 hit on Nov. 25.

As a result, many in the investor community, including the likes of popular trader and analyst Josh Rager, believe the relief rally has ended and the overall bearish trend, as represented by the drop from $10,000 to $6,500, has likely resumed.

That argument appears logical with the daily chart reporting a fresh lower-high pattern.

Daily chart and 8-hour charts

Bitcoin jumped to $7,800 on Friday, as expected, but faced rejection at the resistance of a trendline sloping downwards through Oct. 26 and Nov. 15 highs.

The cryptocurrency also failed to close (UTC) above $7,775 – the 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement of the drop from $10,350 to $6,511.

In effect, the bulls could not preserve the upside momentum after Friday's rejection at key levels and the cryptocurrency has faced selling pressure ever since.

Bitcoin has now established a "bearish lower high" at the falling trendline resistance.

Further, the 8-hour chart is now reporting a flag breakdown, which implies a resumption of the sell-off from recent highs near $10,350.

All that said, a bullish reversal pattern confirmed last week on the three-day chart is still valid.

3-day chart

BTC created a hammer candle in the three days to Nov. 26, signaling seller exhaustion following a notable sell-off.

More importantly, the cryptocurrency rallied 8 percent in the three days to Nov. 29 and found acceptance above the hammer candle's high of $7,380, marking a strong follow-through to the hammer candle and confirming a short-term bearish-to-bullish trend change.

The bullish pattern would be invalidated if and when bitcoin find acceptance under $6,847 – the low of the green candle.

Hourly and daily charts

The pullback from $7,870 lacks substance, with trading volumes dropping over the last 48 hours. A low-volume pullback is often short-lived.

Meanwhile, the daily chart MACD histogram, an indicator used to identify trend changes and gauge the strength, is offering a bullish signal with an above-zero reading.

As a result, bitcoin looks unlikely to violate support at $6,847 and may rise back to the falling trendline resistance, currently at $7,665.

The short-term bullish case would strengthen if prices manage to clear the lower high at $7,870 established over the weekend.

It's worth noting that, as per technical analysis theory, setups on longer time frames take precedence over intraday charts. So, while bitcoin is looking heavy on the 8-hour and daily charts, the pattern on the three-day chart warrants caution on the part of the sellers.--coindesk.com

INVESTORS DIARY 2019

Company

Event

Venue

Date & Time

Companies under Cautionary

Bindura Nickel Corporation

Padenga Holdings

Delta Corporation

Meikles Limited

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DISCLAIMER: This report has been prepared by Bulls ‘n Bears, a division of Faith Capital (Pvt) Ltd for general information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe for any securities. The information contained in this report has been compiled from sources believed to be reliable, but no representation or warranty is made or guarantee given as to its accuracy or completeness. All opinions expressed and recommendations made are subject to change without notice. Securities or financial instruments mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. Securities of emerging and mid-size growth companies typically involve a higher degree of risk and more volatility than the securities of more established companies. Neither Faith Capital nor any other member of Bulls ‘n Bears nor any other person, accepts any liability whatsoever for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this report or its contents or otherwise arising in connection therewith. Recipients of this report shall be solely responsible for making their own independent investigation into the business, financial condition and future prospects of any companies referred to in this report. Other  Indices quoted herein are for guideline purposes only and sourced from third parties.

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