By Mathieu Rosemain

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) – French telecoms network operator Orange will continue to see slow growth in revenues in the Middle East and Africa this year, its regional business chief said.

The company sees the region as key to its future, especially since it sold its mobile operations in Britain and Switzerland, but is struggling to turn it into a strong growth driver as talks with a potential partner in Iran drag on and economic conditions in some African markets remain challenging.

Orange’s revenue growth in the region halved to 2.6 percent last year, a performance that was deemed disappointing by several industry analysts after the operator published its full-year earnings last week.

Bruno Mettling, Orange’s deputy CEO and head of operations for the region, indicated growth this year in the Middle East and Africa, where the company is present in 21 national markets, is unlikely to be much higher.

“In 2017, we think that we’ll have a growth that is at least identical, or even higher,” he said in an interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday.

The former French monopoly should also add to its 120 million customers in the region, he said.

Orange’s revenue and profitability in the region suffered last year from the devaluation of the pound in Egypt, where it has more clients than in France.

They were also hit by the Democratic Republic of Congo’s decision to ask for identification of the country’s mobile customers, which led to a decrease in the number of SIM cards.

Talks with Iran’s largest mobile operator, Mobile Telecommunication Company of Iran (MCI), meanwhile are “very far” from reaching a final agreement, Mettling said.

The discussions, which were revealed last year, first aim at a commercial agreement.

“It’s very long, it’s very slow, it’s very complicated,” Mettling said.

Orange plans to consolidate its Tunisian operations for the first time in its accounts this year, after taking a controlling stake of Orange Tunisia, in which it currently holds a 49 percent stake, Mettling said.

It also aims to partner with Vivendi’s pay-TV unit Canal Plus to develop digital terrestrial television in several sub-Saharan countries, after the two groups were pre-selected in a tender in Ivory Coast.

($1 = 0.9432 euros)

(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Georgina Prodhan and Susan Fenton)

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PORT LOUIS (Reuters) – Mauritius’ tourism revenues are expected to rise 3.8 percent this year after a jump in 2016, the country’s statistics office said on Monday.

Tourism is a valuable source of foreign exchange for the island, known for its luxury spas and India Ocean beaches.

Statistics Mauritius said it expected tourism revenue to climb to 58 billion rupees ($1.64 billion) in 2017, less than an earlier forecast of 59 billion rupees.

Last year tourism earnings were 55.9 billion rupees.

It forecast visitor arrivals to rise 6.8 percent this year to 1.34 million from 1,275,227 million in 2016. The statistics office said the room occupancy rate rose to 73 percent last year from 70 percent in 2015.

($1 = 35.3200 Mauritius rupees)

(Reporting by Jean Paul Arouff; Editing by Clement Uwiringiyimana/Jeremy Gaunt)

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By Tarek Amara

TUNIS (Reuters) – Tunisia is likely to sell stakes in three state-owned banks this year and cut up to 10,000 public sector jobs as part of reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has postponed the payment of the second tranche of a loan, the finance minister said.

Six years after its 2011 pro-democracy uprising, Tunisia is struggling to make economic progress. Last June, the IMF released the first tranche of a loan worth $320 million.

Finance Minister Lamia Zribi told Reuters in an interview a second payment had not been made.

“The IMF postponed the payment of a second tranche worth $350 million scheduled last December because of lack of progress in reforms, including public sector wage bill, the public finances and state banks,” the minister said.

Zribi said an IMF delegation had been expected in Tunisia next month to discuss reforms and the third tranche of the loan, but the team will not come if they did not see reform progress.

Any official suspension of IMF instalments of the loan could push other international partners to retreat from lending to the North African state.

Zribi said the government was ready to launch a new push on the reforms package in the public sector, the banking sector, state companies and taxes.

The minister said the government would immediately begin plans for a voluntary layoff programme for state employees by encouraging early retirement, aiming to cut at least 10,000 public sector jobs in 2017 through the programme.

SPENDING CUTS, LAYOFFS

Since 2011, Tunisia has been backed by foreign partners and multilateral lenders keen to see the new democracy succeed. But economic reforms have lagged behind political changes.

“The wage bill in Tunisia rose to 14.4 percent so far and is among the highest level in the world. We will cut it to 14 percent by the end of 2017 and about 12.5 percent in 2020,” Zribi said, referring to the public wage bill as a proportion of GDP.

The reform of three state banks, Societe Tunisienne de Banque (STB), Banque Nationale Agricole (BNA) and Bank de l’Habitat (BH) are among urgent steps demanded by the IMF.

In 2015 the Tunisian government injected 800 million Tunisian dinars ($350 million) to recapitalise STB, BNA and BH, but the banks still struggle with large deficits.

“We are studying options, including the fusion of the three into one bank, but this actually does not seem realistic. The other option is to sell stakes to strategic partners,” the minister said.

The government is likely to sell its share in seven banks including BTE (Tunisia and Emirates Bank) in which the state has minority holdings, she said.

The government also plans to sell a number of companies confiscated from former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s family in telecommunications, media and service sectors.

Zribi said Tunisia expects to earn less than $300 million from the sale of these companies.

But the minister said there are also positive indicators for the return of growth this year with higher tourist bookings for the peak summer season and a higher level of phosphate production in the first two months of 2017.

Islamist militant attacks against foreigners in 2015 hit the tourism sector hard. Tourism makes up 8 percent of Tunisia’s gross domestic product. Protests over jobs also disrupted state phosphate production, another key revenue earner.

Tunisia’s government expected 2.5 percent growth this year, but Zribi believes it could achieve 3 percent, with the continuation of those positive indicators and forecasts of a good agriculture season.

Since autocrat Ben Ali was overthrown, Tunisia has managed free elections, introduced a new constitution and harnessed a spirit of compromise between secular and Islamist parties to become a model of political change for the region.

But popular protests over the lack of jobs, labour union resistance and political squabbling have held back plans to cut state spending and improve the legal framework for banking and investment to help job creation.

(Editing by Patrick Markey and Elaine Hardcastle)

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CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt will receive the second $1 billion tranche of a $3 billion World Bank loan in March, Central Bank Governor Tarek Amer said on Friday.

Amer told local broadcaster DMC in an interview that the central bank would provide $1.5 billion for payments to foreign oil companies this year and that banks have started allowing foreign companies to repatriate profits.

He stressed that the central bank does not give instructions to banks regarding foreign exchange rates following its float of the pound currency and said the effects of the Nov. 3 float were not as bad as he had initially expected.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Catherine Evans)

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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Barclays PLC has agreed to pay Barclays Africa 12.8 billion rand ($988 million) to fund investments required to separate it from its African unit, Barclays Africa said on Thursday.

Sealing the separation agreement terms paves the way for the British bank to reduce its stake to below 50 percent under a strategy which will see it focus on the United States and Britain.

($1 = 12.9545 rand)

(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; editing by Jason Neely)

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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Barclays Africa missed estimates with a 5 percent rise in annual profit on Thursday as higher interest rates at home and sluggish growth elsewhere on the continent hit consumption and investment spending.

The South African lender, majority owned by Barclays Plc, said diluted headline EPS came in at 17.69 rand in the year to end December.

This was slightly below the 17.95 rand estimate by Thomson Reuters’s StarMine SmartEstimates, which puts more weight on recent forecasts and those from historically accurate analysts.

Headline EPS is the primary measure of profit in South Africa that strips out certain one-off items.

Barclays Africa, along with rivals, has struggled to increase lending as slowing economic growth in many African markets tempers demand from corporate clients and rising interest rates at home hit consumption by retail customers.

Barclays Africa’s results come a year after its parent unveiled a major strategic overhaul that included plans to sell down its stake in the African unit to below 20 percent to focus on the United States and Britain.

Barclays Plc has already trimmed its interest in the South African bank to 50 percent from 62 percent in the open market via the Johannesburg stock exchange.

Barclays Africa’s Chief Executive Maria Ramos said she would issue an update on the company’s separation form Barclays Plc later in the day.

(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Ed Stoddard and Biju Dwarakanath)

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