Zambia
Railway seeks eurobond slice
Zambia Railways is to seek at least $350 million (R3.6 billion) from the government to boost the copper shipped by train by more than 20-fold. Chief executive Muyenga Atanga said yesterday that the rail company would ask for more than a third of the $1bn that Zambia raised last month in a eurobond sale. The rail utility will meet the government next week. – Bloomberg
Ghana
PPI accelerates to 31.5% rate
Ghana’s producer price index (PPI) increased by 31.5 percent year on year last month, up from 27.8 percent in March, the statistics office said yesterday. A rise in manufacturing costs exacerbated by a decline in the cedi currency was the biggest contributor to the increase in the producer inflation rate to a four-year high, although mining and quarrying recorded the biggest single gain, government statistician Philomena Nyarko said. – Reuters
Gabon
Talks to exploit iron ore begin
Gabon had opened initial talks with companies to develop the 1 billion ton Belinga iron ore deposit and would launch a formal tender process in 2016, the state mining firm has said. “In the meantime, we are having conversations with serious parties who are interested,” Société Equatoriale des Mines chief executive Fabrice Nze-Bekale said yesterday, without naming the parties. Belinga is one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of iron ore, but exporting the ore will not be easy because the deposit is separated from the coast by hundreds of kilometres of dense rainforest. – Reuters