Government officials had been silent about the condition of the President inducing several speculations about his well-being while the populace had been informed through international media and social networking sites. The president had died 05 April but an official statement was not released until morning of 07 April, 2012, after 48 hours. Rumors are awash that the silence was a way to tweak the constitution to find a way of having the late president’s young brother, Peter Mutharika, to inherit the presidency.  Let’s now consider several statements made by various quarters of the society over the two-day silence.  For the full report, email info@kaimanaconsulting.com

Leaders of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, also announced they would “activate” the region’s standby military force, though it was unclear when any troops would deploy and with what mandate.

The measures came as local Islamists who helped Tuareg separatists seize northern towns over the weekend began imposing sharia, or Islamic law, ransacking bars and banning Western clothes and music, residents said.  Read full story here.

In the short term, the country needs between 150MW-200MW of electricity to meet both industrial and household demands, but long-term development will be expensive and slow, according to the government officials, reports African Review.

“Without power, we cannot jumpstart our economy. We are looking at the availability of power as a catalyst to attract investment in South Sudan,” said minister for electricity and dam, David Deng Athorbei, in a recent supplement on investment run by regional media in South Sudan.

For instance, it is estimated that building of the national grid across the country will cost more than US$500mn. Juba, the capital of Sudan, alone needs 40MW, but is currently receiving only 6MW mainly due to capacity constraints and lack of fuel to run the existing thermal facilities. Read the full story here.

Malawi’s exchange rate has evolved over time responding to the economic circumstances that have prevailed at particular times. The management of the exchange rate in Malawi has been pursued with three major policy objectives in mind. These are:

i. Maintenance of a sustainable balance of payments position

ii. Attainment of stable domestic prices

iii. Attainment of growth in real income

Government authorities have had a number of challenges to achieve the aforementioned objectives as briefly explained in the following evolution of the exchange rate policy in Malawi. The appendix provides a table chronologically tracking developments in the exchange rate regimes.  For the full report, please contact info@kaimanaconsulting.com.

In addition to the Kamakura CRE Default Models, Kamakura announced that Kamakura Risk Manager Version 8.0, to be released in February, will have full automated access to the Trepp CMBS Engine. The Trepp libraries provide the most comprehensive, industry standard CMBS models in the market.  The flexibility of the Trepp Engine, which will be called from within Kamakura Risk Manager, also accommodates the unique nuances of commercial real estate analysis and stress testing. The design allows for a range of vector or logic-based scenario assumptions at the individual loan, group, and pool levels for CMBS transactions, with call-back capabilities to employ Kamakura’s proprietary default and prepayment models.  Read more here.

The key themes for Africa’s oil and gas sector are as follows:

• Total oil production is set to recover quickly in line with Libyan volumes and higher output from Ghana, Angola and Nigeria.
• Gas output is also likely to rise significantly over the next five years to 2016 as new sources emerge and governments attempt to harness previously flared gas for domestic power generation.
• We forecast a rise in oil consumption on the back of steady economic growth. This is likely to necessitate further investment in the downstream sector, with Chinese development loans most likely to be the principal source of investment.
• The main investment opportunities are likely to be upstream, with West African subsalt and East African gas plays among the most exciting projects. High fuel prices are likely to incentivise further exploration and appraisal over the next decade.

Read full report here.

Just before parliament’s Christmas recess, outgoing Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta withdrew from debate a bill covering financing needs for the year to July this year after lawmakers introduced an amendment seeking to control banks’ lending rates.

If the government cannot get the finance bill through parliament when it resumes sitting on February 14, the government may run out of funds for its day-to-day business and development programs.  Read full story here.

Professor Jarrow begins the paper by showing that life insurance economics and credit default swap economics are essentially identical. Professor Jarrow states in the paper “It seems absurd to…use life insurance premiums to infer the mortality probabilities,” because the mortality probabilities can be directly calculated using actuarial science. Professor Jarrow goes on to say the following:

“Surprisingly, when discussing corporate or sovereign default probabilities, the common belief is almost the reverse. For some unknown reason, it is believed that implied default probabilities from CDS spreads provide reliable estimates. This paper shows that this common belief regarding implied default probabilities is false.”

Read the full report here.