You think 2016 was bad? 2017 was not better…

Happy New Year to all my readers! I wish you all the best for 2018!

Weak GDP growth, high inflation, depreciation of the Congolese Franc (CDF), decrease of the country international reserves, etc characterized 2016.

                 

Well, from those indicators perspectives, 2017 was not better than 2016. Not only the CDF depreciated by another 32% against the USD but also the inflation skyrocketed in 2017 (+54,71% in 2017 against +23,6% the previous year). (There is a strong relation between the depreciation of the local currency and the inflation as most goods consumed in the DRC are imported).

The international reserves remained very low at USD 858,7 millions representing only 3,77 weeks of imports. It only grew by USD 13,3m in one year. It is difficult to support your currency with such a weak foreign exchange position.

This year, the government can’t blame the World Economic Outlook as the world grew faster in 2017 than it did in 2016.  The DRC also enjoyed higher commodity prices with the price of cobalt increasing by more than 130% and the copper by 31% in 2017. Those commodities represent more than 90% of our exports and their production actually increased in 2017 despite the electricity challenges.

The direct impact of this is an expected growth of 3,5% in 2017 compared to 2,4% in 2016. However, with a population growing at an average rate of 3,3% over the last five years, this growth is simply insufficient to impact the population standards of leaving.

In 2017, we have witnessed the weirdest monetary policy measure ever applied by our government when trying to stabilize the CDF. It consisted in forbidding Bureau de Change displaying their exchange rates outside their building! Apparently it was the source of the depreciation! One lady was even jailed for displaying the rates…

Nestlé has decided to close its Congolese plant in 2017 leaving more than 120 people out of jobs (thousands of people will be indirectly impacted by this measure). The official reason are the poor purchasing power of the Congolese, the inflation and the products entering fraudulently from Angola without paying taxes.

Heineken closed two of its plants in the country with the same social consequences for its staff. Consumption of beer in the country has always been a useful indicator of how the real economy is performing. Indeed, when everything goes bad, beer is one of the last items on the shopping list…

Mining companies are still waiting to be paid back by the government their VAT for almost a billion of USD! For example, the government owes to Rangold Resources USD 192 million in unpaid VAT rebates!!!

As I am typing this text, Internet has been shut down by the government for the third consecutive day and no one knows when it will be back. One can imagine the loss made not only by the Telco companies but also by all organizations depending on their services.

The sad reality is that doing business in the DRC is more complicated than ever despite the government being happy that the country jumped two places in World Bank doing business report. We are still one of the worst performers in the world.

Not only, we are not able to attract fresh significant investments but we are also losing some of the key players that were already operating here.

Can we expect 2018 to be better? With all the political uncertainty surrounding the country presidential election one cannot be sure…

The Central Bank of Congo (BCC) monetary policy is still… impotent…

In 25th of January article, I argued that the Central Bank decision to increase its prime rate from 7 to 14% wouldn’t help curb the Congolese Franc (CDF) depreciation.

Unfortunately (for the country), I was right and 5 months later, the local currency further depreciated by almost 18%.

Earlier this week, the BCC has increased its prime rate from 14 to 20% to stabilize the CDF.  Once again, I doubt this decision will have any positive impact for the same reasons explained in my previous article.

With an inflation of 36%, the real interest remains largely negative (-16%) and therefore, there is no incentive to keep CDF. Why would someone buy treasury bills in CDF if the return worth less than the principal invested equivalent in United States Dollars (USD) (remember that the USD is the primary currency in the DRC)?

The reality on the ground is that people lost trust in the CDF; therefore, they try to get rid of it as fast as possible. People are expecting the local currency to depreciate everyday and are ready to buy USD at any rate fueling the CDF depreciation further… It is a vicious circle, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In my opinion, the only short-term remedy would be for the BCC to intervene on the Foreign Exchange market by selling USD to reduce a little bit the pressure on the CDF. However, the international reserves are limited to CDF 717m. Therefore, the intervention can only be limited.

Last week the Chamber of Mines, announced that they are expecting a record production of copper for the year 2017 to 1,05 m tons. Copper is DRC primary source of foreign currencies. Hopefully, this expected increase of production (+2,4%) would allow the BCC to rebuild its international reserves in order to intervene on the market and limit this hemorrhage.  

Another bank is going down …

On the 8th of June 2017, the Central Bank (BCC) Governor has issued a statement to inform us the people « avis au public » that Fibank was going to be liquidated…

However, the Governor wants to reassure the bank’s customers that no one deposit will be lost as another healthier bank, Afriland Firstbank, is taking over the (healthy) assets and liabilities of the falling bank. This may prevent a rush to the cashiers’ desks…

Fibank RDC SA was a subsidiary of a West Africa banking group with its head-office in Banjul, Gambia. The bank has started operating in the DRC in February 2009.

The bank was under the management of the Central Bank for the last 18 months due to poor performance (notably in terms of non performing loans) with the mission of stabilizing the institution and (hopefully) to reinforce it…

Whatever the reason for this liquidation, this clearly demonstrates another failure from the banks regulator in preventing another bank to get into trouble.

This is the second bank under BCC supervision in less than 10 years that is liquidated and now all eyes are, once again, on BIAC. Although, I think, economic operators have already factored in the potential bankruptcy of BIAC; no one really knows how another bankruptcy will impact people (low) confidence in our banking sector.

It is worth noting that Fibank was one of the smallest banks while BIAC was the fourth largest bank in the DRC.

Today, it seems that the BCC is more proactive in dealing with those issues although it may be already too late to save BIAC…

On to the next good news…  

Macro update (and the correlation between the CDF depreciation and the BIAC case… )

It’s been a while since I have updated you on the main economic indicators of the DRC. I guess I was expecting to come back to you with good news at some point but while I am still waiting for it to happen let’s have a look at the actual performance.

Let’s start with one of my favorites because of its impact on the other indicators, the exchange rate. Since the beginning of the year the local currency has lost 19% of its value against the US dollar! Since January the 1^st, 2016 the currency has depreciated by 56% (while it was stable for 4 straight years before that)!!!

They are so many reasons that can explain this horrendous performance (commodities prices decrease, budget deficit, money creation, etc).

However, one of the reasons used last year by the former Prime Minister is not one of them! Indeed, the latter said last year that the main reason he has instructed the Central Bank of Congo (BCC) to stop refinancing the then 3^rd largest bank of the country (leading to its quasi bankruptcy) was that this operation led to a depreciation of … 3%!

He was a bright man, therefore, all things being equal, you would expect that his decision would have had a positive impact of some sort on the exchange rate but since that decision and the resolution to put that bank under the control of the BCC, the Congolese Franc has lost 51%!!! Therefore, I am struggling to see the correlation between the BCC lending to BIAC and the depreciation J. It would be like saying that the supervision of BIAC by the BCC led to a 51% depreciation of the local currency but this is a shortcut I am not ready to take contrary to the previous Prime Minister.

Anyway, we could debate all day on who/what is responsible for this situation but there is something more important. The impact it has on people lives. The country is importing almost everything he is consuming. Therefore, the CDF depreciation led to an important inflation of good and services (+31%) reducing drastically the purchasing power of anybody paid in the local currency (mainly civil servants), as their salaries have not been adjusted for inflation.

As an example, a civil servant with a monthly salary in CDF equivalent of USD 100 (please note that this salary is not fictive) last year barely earns USD 65 today! I was already struggling to understand how one (with a full time job) could survive with USD 100 but now…

The FOREX reserves dropped to USD 718m representing only 3 weeks of goods and services importations. As a result, we cannot expect any impactful intervention from the BCC anytime soon…

But we have a good new! We finally have the 2017 budget!!! Youhou! It is USD 3billion bigger than the one presented by the former Prime Minister (that did not stay long enough on the job to implement it). I can’t wait to have more details to understand how they intend to finance this budget increase based on the economic situation of the country…