Major International Business Headlines Brief::: 28 May 2019

Tue May 28 04:11:18 CAT 2019

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Major International Business Headlines Brief::: 28 May 2019

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*  Nigerian president signs $29 bln 2019 budget into law

*  Kenya central bank holds main lending rate, eyes on inflation

*  South Africa's Telkom cuts 12.5% jobs, mobile boosts profit

*  Nigeria to issue green bond of up to 15 bln naira - debt office

*  South Africa's rand steady, focus on cabinet appointments

*  S&P keeps South Africa in 'junk' status, sees post-election reforms

*  Botswana cancels 100mw solar power tender, plans to reissue

*  MTN Nigeria listing being investigated by Nigerian financial crimes agency

*  Fiat Chrysler proposes merger with Renault

*  What's gone wrong with Brazil's economy?

*  How will Modi handle India's economy?

*  Facebook facing most probes by Irish data regulator

*  Feeling the impact of Trump's foreign worker squeeze

 <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> 

Nigerian president signs $29 bln 2019 budget into law

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari signed an 8.9 trillion naira ($29 billion) budget for 2019 into law on Monday.

Approved by lawmakers last month, the budget is based on estimated oil production of 2.3 million barrels a day, an assumed crude price of $60 per barrel and an exchange rate of 305 naira to the dollar.

Nigeria’s economy, the largest in Africa, grew by 1.93% last year, its fastest pace since a recession two years earlier which was caused by the impact of low oil prices. The continent’s top oil producer relies on crude sales for about 90 percent of its foreign exchange.

The planned deficit of 1.9 trillion naira represents 1.37% of GDP.

Buhari is due to be inaugurated for a second four-year term on Wednesday. He won re-election in February after pledging to revive the economy, improve security and tackle corruption.

Last month the upper house of parliament increased the budget by 80 billion naira to 8.9 trillion naira, up from the 8.83 trillion naira presented by Buhari to lawmakers last year.

 <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> 

Kenya central bank holds main lending rate, eyes on inflation

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya’s central bank left its benchmark lending rate unchanged at 9.0% on Monday but its monetary policy committee said it would keep an eye on recent food and fuel price rises that could fuel inflation.

It was the fifth time in a row the bank has held rates.

“The Committee noted that inflation expectations remained well anchored within the target range, but there is need to remain vigilant on possible spillovers of recent food and fuel price increases,” the bank said in a statement.

Rising food, electricity and fuel prices pushed inflation to an annual 6.58% in April from 4.35% a month earlier, within the government’s preferred band of 2.5-7.5% but the highest reading since September 2017.

The finance ministry expects the economy to grow 6.1% this year, slightly slower than 6.3% in 2018. The central bank said the economy was operating close to its potential.

In its statement, it said private sector credit had grown by 4.9% in the 12 months to April, compared to 4.3% in March, predicting further growth this year, despite banks’ complaints that a commercial lending cap is creating a credit squeeze.

They say the cap limiting commercial lending rates to 4 percentage points above the benchmark has forced them to cut back on loans to high-risk groups.

A Kenyan court ruled in March that the cap, imposed in late 2016, was unconstitutional, but judges suspended the decision for 12 months to allow parliament to reassess the policy.

Earlier this month, Finance Minister Henry Rotich said the International Monetary Fund was no longer insisting Kenya remove that cap as a precondition for a new standby credit facility.

The central bank said foreign exchange reserves were at an all-time high of $10.06 billion, or 6.4 months of import cover, helped by a $2.1 billion Eurobond the government sold earlier this month.

It said a shrinking current account deficit was supporting the foreign exchange market and said the deficit was expected to narrow further, to 4.8 percent of GDP in 2019 from 5.0 percent in 2018.

South Africa's Telkom cuts 12.5% jobs, mobile boosts profit

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa’s Telkom SA has cut 12.5% of the group’s permanent jobs, it said on Monday after posting a 22.6% surge in full-year earnings as upbeat performance in its mobile business offset declines in the traditional fixed-line unit.

Telkom, which runs South Africa’s biggest fixed-line telecom network, said the group had 15,296 permanent jobs on March 31, down from 17,472 in the year ending March 2018 due to voluntary severance packages, voluntary early retirement packages and other layoffs under the country’s labour law.

Some job cuts came from Telkom’s information and communications technology business BCX, where the number of permanent employees fell 13.4% to 5,782 under a cost reduction programme.

“We expect the savings from this programme to come through in the next financial year,” Telkom said in its result statement.

At 0806 GMT, shares in Telkom were down 1.43% to 85.22 rand ($5.90).

Headline earnings per share (HEPS), the main profit measure in South Africa, came in at 722.4 cents for the year until the end of March compared with 589.3 cents a year earlier.

HEPS excludes 728 million rand in costs from voluntary severance and retirement packages and layoffs related to section 189 of the labour law.

Telkom, 40 percent owned by the state, is seeking to transform the business with heavy investments in its mobile phone unit and by rolling out fibre internet packages.

Mobile service revenue climbed 58.3% to 8.2 billion rand, while fixed service revenue fell 8.8%.

“The significant growth in mobile service revenue was supported by an 85.9 percent growth in active subscribers to 9.7 million,” Chief Executive Officer Sipho Maseko said.

Group earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization rose 8.5%, benefiting from the revenue growth of 5.3% and ongoing sustainable cost management, it said.

($1 = 14.4111 rand)

Nigeria to issue green bond of up to 15 bln naira - debt office

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria will issue a green bond of up to 15 billion naira ($49 million) to fund environmental projects, the country’s debt office said on Monday.

In a statement, it said it would hold roadshows in Lagos and Abuja on Monday and Tuesday.

South Africa's rand steady, focus on cabinet appointments

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa’s rand steadied against the U.S. dollar in early trade on Monday, as markets wait for President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce a new cabinet in the week after his inauguration.

S&P keeps South Africa in 'junk' status, sees post-election reforms

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - S&P Global Ratings kept South Africa’s foreign- and local-currency credit ratings in “junk” territory with a stable outlook late on Friday, saying the new government was expected to focus on reforms to revive the economy.

Newly elected President Cyril Ramaphosa has pledged to rekindle growth by fixing state firms, easing policy uncertainty and luring back foreign investment that dried up in the last decade under his predecessor Jacob Zuma.

S&P kept the country’s long-term foreign-currency rating at ‘BB’, while the long-term local-currency rating was held at ‘BB+’. Both carry a stable outlook. The ratings agency made the same assessment in November 2018 after slashing the rating in 2017.

Fitch Ratings also rates Pretoria’s debt as junk. Of the top three ratings firms only Moody’s classifies the sovereign as investment-grade.

“The stable outlook reflects our view that, with the elections now over, the South African government will pursue some reforms and attempt to improve economic growth and try and contain fiscal deficits,” the firms said in a statement.

Ramaphosa was sworn in as South Africa’s president on Saturday, vowing to create jobs and tackle deep-rooted corruption that has strangled economic growth.

Botswana cancels 100mw solar power tender, plans to reissue

GABORONE (Reuters) - The Botswana Power Corporation (BPC), has cancelled a tender in which it was seeking private investor partners to build a 100MW solar power plant, and plans to reissue the tender to make the project fully private owned, the state-owned utility said on Saturday.

“The project which was initially structured as a joint venture between BPC and private producers will now be implemented through independent power producers, meaning it will be 100 percent privately owned,” the BPC said in a statement.

“A new tender is anticipated to be floated by end of June 2019,” said the BPC.

The tender in the southern African country had received 166 bids from both local and international power producers.

The state power supplier forecasts energy demand to more than double to 1,359MW by 2035 from around 600MW currently, and is modernising its power grid and sources to meet the surge.

MTN Nigeria listing being investigated by Nigerian financial crimes agency

ABUJA (Reuters) - MTN Nigeria said on Saturday it is under investigation by the Nigerian financial crimes agency over its listing last week, although it “has not been accused of any wrongdoing” by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

The listing of MTN Nigeria, a unit of South African telecoms firm MTN Group, made it the second-largest firm on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, and since then its share price has risen from 90 naira to 140 naira.

A spokesman for Nigeria’s financial crimes agency was not immediately available for comment.

“We received all regulatory approvals required to list our shares,” MTN Nigeria said in a statement. “We are co-operating fully with the authorities.”

Fiat Chrysler proposes merger with Renault

Fiat Chrysler has made a "transformative" merger proposal for French carmaker Renault, the Italian firm said on Monday.

The combined business would be 50% owned by Fiat shareholders and 50% by Renault stockholders.

The carmaker said the merger would create a global automotive leader, with 8.7 million vehicle sales.

Carmakers have faced pressure to consolidate amid major industry shifts, including towards electric vehicles.

Shares in both companies rose strongly following the announcement.

In a statement, Fiat Chrysler (FCA) said the planned merger would create a "world leader in the rapidly changing automotive industry with a strong position in transforming technologies, including electrification and autonomous driving".

Fiat said that if the firms' 2018 financial results were totted up, the combined company's annual revenues would be nearly €170bn (£149.6bn; $190.5bn), with operating profit of more than €10bn and net profit of more than €8bn.

No plant closures would be caused as a result of the tie-up, the carmaker said.

Robotics sale

It will aim to save €5bn a year by sharing development costs on technology such as electric vehicles and self-driving cars.

It is thought some managerial positions may be lost, but the companies will be keen to show that production-line jobs are being preserved.

The new company will be based in the Netherlands and will be listed on the Milan, Paris and New York stock exchanges.

To make the merger one of equals, the slightly-wealthier FCA will pay a special dividend of €2.5bn and sell its Comau robotics business.

The proposal will be considered by the Renault board. Who will lead the new entity and what it might be called are not yet decided.

New competitors

If the plan goes ahead, Nissan and the French government will own about 7.5% apiece of the new, merged company.

The French government favours the merger but wants more details before giving its final approval, a spokeswoman said.

The Italian government may want to acquire a share of the new firm to balance France's stake, said a politician from the Northern League, the country's largest party, according to Reuters.

By sales, the new company will be number four in North America, number two in the region which covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the biggest in Latin America.

Industry shifts toward electric models, along with stricter emissions standards and the development of new technologies for autonomous vehicles, have put increasing pressure on carmakers to consolidate.

Renault already has an alliance with Japan's Nissan, in which research costs and parts are shared. The companies own shares in each other, too. Renault owns 43.4% of Nissan's shares and Nissan owns 15% of Renault.

The former chief executive of both Nissan and Renault, Carlos Ghosn, is awaiting trial following his fourth arrest amid allegations of financial misconduct.

The allegations have put a strain on the 20-year-old alliance, which also includes Japan's Mitsubishi Motors.

New entrants in the motoring sector such as Tesla, as well as cash-rich companies developing driverless technology such as Amazon and Google-owned Waymo, are putting pressure on older and often heavily indebted carmakers to keep up.--BBC

What's gone wrong with Brazil's economy?

On 1 January, when Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took office, many in the country were concerned that the divisive politician would not be able to bring the country together.

But one sector was almost unanimous in praising Mr Bolsonaro's rise to power: business people.

Brazil's president boasted during the election that he did not understand anything about economics.

Once in power, he delegated all decisions on the subject to businessman Paulo Guedes, who became a "super-minister" of the economy.

The task of rescuing Brazil's economy from the brink of yet another recession was urgent. The economy is still at the same level it was back in 2014.

Markets were excited at the prospects of liberal reforms to come.

Is the honeymoon period over for Brazil's Bolsonaro?

Jair Bolsonaro: The Trump of the Tropics?

But expectations soon started to fall apart. A series of government blunders - political infighting inside the administration, a clumsy attempt at state intervention in Brazil's fuel policy and the lack of leadership in Congress - hampered growth expectations.

Most analysts have halved their growth expectations for Brazil and now believe significant growth will not start until 2020.

Here is a look at some of the key figures that suggest Brazil's economy is not moving forward.

1. There's no economic recovery in sight

In the previous decade, Brazil was lauded (along with Russia, India, China and South Africa) as one of the Brics powers - emerging economies with superfast rates of economic growth that would surpass developed economies by 2050.

The economic performance of this decade, however, suggests Brazil does not belong in that league.

A crippling two-year recession in 2015 and 2016 saw the country's economy contract by almost 7%.

Economic recovery has been sluggish. In 2017 and 2018, the economy grew at a meagre pace of 1.1% a year.

And there is still more bad news: since the beginning of the year, economists have more than halved their expectations of economic growth for 2019 to a rate not very different from that seen in the past two years.

2. The unemployment problem isn't being solved

Brazilian workers are the ones paying the price.

The number of unemployed people has increased from 7.6 million in 2012 to 13.4 million this year.

Mr Bolsonaro thinks these numbers actually underestimate the real picture. He believes the situation is worse.

The official unemployment survey shows that 28.3 million people are under-utilised - which means they are either not working or working less than they could.

There are fewer people with formal jobs, while wages are barely keeping up with inflation - which has been brutal. Since the beginning of Brazil's recession four years ago, prices have gone up by 25%.

3. The currency and stock market have dashed post-election hopes

During much of the election, the Brazil's currency - the real - rallied strongly as it became clear that Mr Bolsonaro would win the election.

It was a clear sign of confidence from investors abroad.

A poll by Bloomberg late last year among chief international strategists saw Brazil top the list of best bets in three categories: foreign exchange, bonds and stocks.

After almost five months, prospects are now bleak.

Both the stock exchange and the currency - which usually anticipate the pace in the real economy - are close to the same level they were at the beginning of this year.

Brazil's stock exchange hit an all-time high in March this year, but has returned most of its gains following disappointing corporate results.

4. Still mired in debt

So why is Brazil in such a mess in the first place?

The main consensus among market analysts - and also people in Mr Bolsonaro's government - is that the country started spending too much money around 2013, during the leftist government of Dilma Rousseff.

Since then, one of the main thermometers of Brazil's economy has been the fiscal deficit - the amount of money spent beyond the country's revenues.

Ms Rousseff was impeached amid allegations that she masked Brazil's fiscal deficit to hide how much her government was overspending.

Since her downfall, all efforts from the government have gone into lowering this fiscal deficit.

Some economists say the main culprit is the pension system, with Brazilians retiring too early (some in their early 50s) and with too many benefits (especially amongst civil servants).

Mr Bolsonaro is proposing pension cuts and a minimal retirement age of 65 for men and 62 for women.

During the boom years, Brazil had a debt which was 51% the size of its economy.

The growing fiscal deficit raised the debt level to 77.1%.

The government says that if nothing is done, the country's debt will be the size of its entire economy by 2023.---BBC

How will Modi handle India's economy?

Narendra Modi has secured a historic second election victory.

Indian stocks and the rupee rose to welcome the news: another parliamentary majority for the BJP party could grant Mr Modi the opportunity to make promised reforms a reality.

But once the euphoria around his emphatic win at the polls has faded, there will remain some tough economic challenges in his in-tray.

What did he do in his first term?

The economic record for Mr Modi's first term in office is mixed.

He initiated some bold reforms, such as a new bankruptcy law, to help tackle a rise bad debts that was putting pressure on the banking sector.

His government reduced red tape, helping move India to 77th in the World Bank's 2019 Doing Business ranking, an improvement from 134th place when he first took office in 2014.

India also became the world's fastest growing economy during that first term.

But his biggest gamble, banning more than three quarters of the rupee notes in circulation in order to battle corruption, misfired and delivered a significant blow to economic growth. Without replacement notes ready in time, India's gigantic informal economy was temporarily crippled - leading to job losses.

The rollout of a new national sales tax didn't go smoothly either. In the long run the new tax is expected to boost economic growth by streamlining a multitude of complicated taxes into a single tax. But in the short term glitches around its introduction had a severe impact on millions of small and medium-sized businesses.

What should we expect in his second term?

As Mr Modi gets his feet back under the desk for his second term, economists like Surjit Bhalla believe that his increased majority will give Mr Modi more freedom to take tough decisions.

"Given the size of the mandate, we can expect bolder reforms during the next five years," says Mr Bhalla, who served on the prime minister's economic advisory council during Mr Modi's first term.

But the scale of India's problems matches that mandate.

Economic growth slowed to 6.6% in the three months to December 2018, the slowest rate for six quarters.

According to a leaked government report, unemployment touched a 45-year high between 2016 and 2017.

What will he do about jobs?

Experts say that Mr Modi needs to spur flagging private sector investment in order to boost job creation. His flagship Make in India programme, aimed at giving manufacturing a big boost, has yielded mixed results so far.

Ajit Ranade, chief economist of Mumbai-based, Aditya Birla Group, believes that focusing on overseas markets is the key to creating more employment opportunities.

"Exports and manufacturing are intertwined. Unless exports grow the manufacturing sector won't expand," he says.

The new government should focus on labour-intensive sectors like construction, tourism, textiles and agricultural products, he adds.

Can Modi boost growth?

Unlike China, India's economic growth has been driven by domestic consumption over the last fifteen years. But data released over the last few months suggests that consumer spending is slowing.

Sales of cars and SUVs have slumped to a seven-year low. Tractor, motorbike and scooter sales are down. Demand for bank credit has sputtered. Hindustan Unilever has reported slower revenue growth in the most recent quarter. All of these are important benchmarks for measuring consumer appetite.

Mr Modi's party promised in its manifesto that it would cut income tax to ensure more cash and greater purchasing power stayed in the hands of middle-income families.

However, given the current state of government finances, that may not be possible immediately. India's 3.4% budget deficit - the gap between government expenditure and revenue - may restrict Mr Modi's options.

"The widening fiscal deficit is a slow-acting poison," says Mr Ranade. He believes this will hold back medium and long-term growth.

Will he help farmers?

The agrarian crisis was a constant challenge for Mr Modi during his first term. Farmers across the country protested on the streets, demanding higher prices for their crops.

Small-scale farmers have been promised more support, but structural changes to the way the market works might be preferable to measures that will put additional pressure on the government's already stretched budget, argues Ila Patnaik, a former economic advisor to the government of India.

She would like to see the end of the system whereby farmers are required to sell their products to state-owned agencies at a fixed price.

"We need to free up the farmers so that they can sell products to whoever they want. This will also encourage them to move to high value products," she says.

Will Modi push privatisation?

One of his headline election pledges was a promise to spend $1.44 trillion to build roads, railways and other infrastructure. But such an eye-watering sum will have to come from somewhere. Many observers expect privatisation to play a key role.

Mr Modi made slow progress on his pledges to sell off government enterprises in his first term. The government did initiate the process of selling a majority stake in national carrier Air India, but with a tepid response from investors, the plan failed to take off.

Mr Bhalla expects Mr Modi to pursue privatisation more aggressively in his second term.

"The next two years is a good time for the government to [speed up] the process of privatisation," he argues.

And he believes a willingness to embrace bolder policies could entice more foreign investors to put their money in India.

"During his first term, Mr Modi has shown the appetite to take up tough reforms and he will definitely try to take even bigger risks during his second term," he says.--BBC

Facebook facing most probes by Irish data regulator

Social media giant Facebook and its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp have been the subject of most data investigations in the Republic of Ireland since the European Union's new data protection regulation came into force a year ago.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission says it has launched 19 statutory investigations, 11 of which focus on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Twitter and LinkedIn are also under investigation, and last week the commission launched a probe in to Google over the way it uses personal data to provide targeted advertising.

This follows on from Google's €50m ($56m; £44m) fine imposed by French data regulator CNIL for "lack of transparency, inadequate information and lack of valid consent regarding ads personalisation".

Google is appealing against the decision.

Most of the major US tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, LinkedIn, Airbnb and Dropbox, are registered for processing personal data in Ireland.

So the responsibility for policing their compliance with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - which started in May 2018 - falls on the country's Data Protection Commission (DPC).

Nine of the DPC's investigations were launched after complaints from individuals or businesses, while 10 have been instigated by the DPC itself.

The most common concerns are about the legal basis for processing personal data, lack of transparency about how a company collects personal data, and people's right to access their data.

"There has been a huge increase in awareness among individuals about their data rights since GDPR came in," says Graham Doyle, the DPC's head of communications.

This has led to a steep rise in complaints, with the number increasing from 2,500 in 2017 to more than 6,500 now, says Mr Doyle.

An office of 27 staff has had to be beefed up to more than 130. Mr Doyle expects the number to rise eventually to more than 200 over the next year or so.

A Facebook spokesperson said: "We spent more than 18 months working to ensure we comply with the GDPR.

"We made our policies clearer, our privacy settings easier to find and introduced better tools for people to access, download, and delete their information. We are in close contact with the Irish Data Protection Office to ensure we are answering any questions they may have."

What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect in May 2018 and gives EU citizens more rights over how their personal data is collected, used and stored.

We have the right to demand a copy of our personal data from companies, and they have to comply within a month.

That data must be easy to understand and should also be presented in a machine-readable format, so that a customer could transfer all their data to a competitor.

We can ask for any incorrect data to be corrected or for the whole lot to be deleted if we want.

And companies have a responsibility to keep our data safe. If any is stolen or unwittingly shared with unauthorised organisations, companies have to inform the national data regulator within 72 hours.

"Big tech is well and truly in the spotlight at the moment following the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal and other well-publicised data breaches," says Anthony Lee, data privacy expert and partner at law firm DMH Stallard.

Facebook fined £500,000 for data scandal

Amazon, Apple, Google face data complaints

"A lot of these big tech companies are consumer facing so handle a lot of personal data, but come from the US which doesn't have as strong privacy laws as Europe," he adds.

"If they weren't well attuned to the requirements that GDPR imposes, they certainly are now."

According to the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), fines levied for GDPR breaches now top €56m. Fines can be as high as €20m or 4% of annual turnover.

"In the first year, we've seen tens of thousands of complaints and data breaches," says Omer Tene, the IAPP's vice president and chief knowledge officer.

"But we've yet to see much evidence that the GDPR has led to an improvement in organisations' data practices."

IAPP estimates that organisations have appointed more than 500,000 data protection officers with specific responsibility for handling GDPR-related issues.

But it thinks many companies still need to do much more to bring themselves fully into compliance.

And Ann Bevitt, partner at law firm Cooley, believes that while some companies have instigated a "wholesale change in their culture around privacy and data protection", many others have simply engaged in "a box-ticking exercise with little to no embedded change in practice".

A year after GDPR came in to force, she warns that "to some extent, the impact has yet to be felt, in that we haven't yet seen significant enforcement activity, both in terms of volume and amount".

This is likely to change over the next year as the number of completed investigations - and potential fines - rises.

There is a time lag because investigations can take many months. All parties need to be consulted before the data protection authority can reach a conclusion. Then the decision has to be circulated to all the other EU data protection authorities for approval.

And the company under investigation has the right to appeal against the final decision.

Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner, Helen Dixon, is expected to circulate her decisions on some cases by July or August, with final rulings made by the end of the year, Mr Doyle predicts.

Big tech firms may be feeling the heat for some time to come.--BBC

Feeling the impact of Trump's foreign worker squeeze

Jiri Stejskal is the type of entrepreneur that helps the US economy to flourish.

The 58-year-old runs a successful translation business on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

His company - Cetra Language Solutions - employs 35 people and has an annual turnover of $5m (£4m).

His high profile clients include food giant Nestle and the US defence department.

Mr Stejskal also happens to be an immigrant to the US. He arrived in the country in 1988 as a political refugee from the former Czechoslovakia, and turned his life into a business success story.

This is relevant, because under President Trump's continuing "America First" policy, US companies are being told to hire more home-grown Americans instead of giving jobs to people from overseas like Mr Stejskal.

In fact, two years ago the president signed the Presidential Executive Order on Buy American and Hire American.

This called on US government agencies to tighten up the immigration system, including a key temporary work visa called H-1B.

The name may not be memorable, but this visa allows US firms to hire skilled foreign workers for a three-year period.

Mr Stejskal says that it is now increasingly difficult to get an application approved, and new figures back him up.

In 2017 the rejection rate for H-1B requests was 13%, but this year it has risen to 32%, according to a survey last month by non-partisan think tank National Foundation for American Policy.

At the same time, it found that the rate of rejections for applications to extend current visas for a further three years rose from 3% to 18%.

"This is misguided protectionism," says Mr Stejskal. "It is clear that behind these policies is a will to cut all immigration in a country founded by immigrants."

He adds that while he previously recruited two people via the visa per annum, he hasn't attempted it this year.

Mr Stejskal says this is because the US Citizenship and Immigration Service, which handles the visa, kept asking for more and more information, officially known as requests for evidence (RFE).

"The constant requests for evidence we have submitted over and over, and the delays, discourage me from further hiring H-1B visas," he says.

Global Trade

More from the BBC's series taking an international perspective on trade:

*         The pistachios that need police protection

*         Is Eritrea coming in from the cold?

*         Meet the fish leather pioneers

*         The deadly disease wiping out pigs

*         Will AI kill developing world growth?

Elizabeth Ricci, an immigrant law expert, says that the numbers of RFEs are soaring.

"Two thirds of last fiscal year's H-1Bs were issued RFEs," she says. "The year before less than half.

"They slow down a case, and make it much less desirable for an employer to use foreign talent."

She adds that if a company seeks help from an immigration lawyer, it all adds to their legal bill.

One such business currently stuck in this position is Virginia-based software firm Phone2Action.

Its chief executive Jeb Ory says he has now spent thousands on legal fees linked to an application for a H-1B for a highly skilled Ghanaian engineer, which is still unresolved after more than a year.

Mr Ory fears that if companies like his cannot employ competent people from abroad it will "ultimately hurt the American economy".

Numerous studies back up his worries. More than half of the software developers in the Seattle area - which is home to Microsoft - were born outside of the US, according to a 2018 report by the Seattle Times newspaper.

Meanwhile, Forbes magazine told its readers at the start of this year that almost half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list of the largest US firms were founded by first or second-generation immigrants.

Yet applications for H-1Bs are falling. Official figures show that there were 236,000 in 2016, 199,000 in 2017, and 190,098 in 2018.

While US companies apply for the visa on behalf of the would-be immigrant, the biggest recipients of H-1Bs are Indian nationals, followed by people from China.

A leading scientist at a Chinese university says he is pleased that fewer students from his country seemingly now want to work in the US.

"There is no longer a brain drain for China," says the academic who wished to remain anonymous.

"The fact that we are treated as spies in America... and China's exploding productivity growth make Chinese students invest their ingenuity at home."

Across in India, 30-something entrepreneur Mani Karthik quit the American dream in 2017.

He had spent seven years working in Silicon Valley, but says that the increasingly restrictive visa system, and concerns about what he saw as a growing hostility to immigrants made him go back to India.

He now assists other entrepreneurial and ambitious Indians to return home from the US and find good employment.

"I have helped at least 500 people relocate back to India," he says. "We are bringing the once-gone brains back."

However, despite the decline in applications for the H-1B visa, they still exceed the amount that are given out every year to businesses. This is set at 65,000, plus an additional 20,000 spaces per year for foreign students who have gained a masters degree from an American university.

Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a US think tank, says: "The US economy is doing really good right now.

"So, even though President Trump is creating a hit on the H-1B programme, to the extent that there are less people interested in coming in, and more people get kicked out of it... the supply of immigrants who are interested in coming to work in the US, and the supply of employers that are interested in bringing them here, remains huge."

Meanwhile, lawyer and businessman David Reisher, owner of New York-based Legal Advice Group, says that President Trump's efforts to give more jobs to Americans was "a common sense plan".

"It will help put Americans back to work without requiring any major new spending," he says.

Yet back at Cetra Language Solutions, Mr Stejskal is now thinking of creating employment overseas instead: "I'm considering hiring foreign nationals in offices abroad."--BBC

INVESTORS DIARY 2019

Company

Event

Venue

Date & Time

Dairibord

AGM

Steward Room, Meikles

31 May 2019, 12pm

Lafarge

AGM

Manresa Club, Arcturus

05 June 2019 , 12pm

CBZ

AGM

Stewart Room, Meikles

05 June 2019 , 3pm

 <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> 

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