NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya’s central bank sold dollars in the foreign exchange market on Wednesday after the shilling weakened due to heavy importer demand from sectors like energy, traders said.

At 0723 GMT, commercial banks quoted the shilling at 103.10/20 to the dollar, compared with Tuesday’s close of 102.80/103.00. The shilling last traded at its present levels in mid-October 2015, when it hit a low of 103.50/60 on Oct. 13.

“Markets weakened and then we have seen central bank in the market. It has reduced the pace of the shilling’s depreciation. There is lots of demand,” said a senior trader at one commercial bank.

The central bank rarely comments on dollar sales.

(Reporting by George Obulutsa and Duncan Miriri)

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LUSAKA (Reuters) – Zambian workers have downed tools at a mine and copper processing plant belonging to Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), a unit of Vedanta Resources, in a dispute over the pace of wage talks, a union official said on Wednesday.

“The day shift workers have not entered the plant, they are protesting the slow pace of salary negotiations,” National Union of Mine and Allied Workers (NUMAW) trustee Jonathan Musukwa told Reuters.

(Reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by Ed Stoddard and Susan Fenton)

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LUSAKA (Reuters) – Zambia’s retail fuel prices will fall from midnight on Tuesday due to subdued oil prices and a stronger kwacha currency, the energy regulator said.

The price of petrol will be reduced to 12.50 kwacha from 13.70 kwacha and diesel will drop to 10.72 kwacha per litre from 11.40 kwacha per litre.

In October last year, Zambia hiked the retail price of petrol by nearly 39 percent, while the price of diesel was increased by 33 percent.

($1 = 718.5000 kwacha)

(Reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by Joe Brock)

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ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Favourable weather in Ivory Coast’s main cocoa regions bode well for the April-September mid-crop harvest, farmers said, even though low international prices continued to dent demand.

The Harmattan, a northerly wind that blows dust off the Sahara between December and March, damaging crops to the south, so far remained mild, farmers said. Last season, strong winds caused severe damage.

“It did not rain, but everything is fine on the trees. We still have a lot of pods to cut,” said Pascal Kobena, who farms in the Abengourou region, an area known for the good quality of its beans.

Farmers said low global prices had depressed demand from buyers, leading to mounting stockpiles of beans. New York and London cocoa futures hit three-year lows last month on strong supply and forecasts of a global surplus next year.

Activity at the exporting port of Abidjan was slow because of low international prices, farmers across the growing regions said. This could impact picking towards the end of the month, said one farmer in the centre-western region of Daloa

“The problem at the moment is that we cannot sell. Growers are worried because beans are coming out slowly,” Kobena said.

Still, the crop was progressing well. In the western region of Soubre, at the heart of the cocoa belt, farmers said one rainfall this month would ensure a healthy mid-crop.

Good growing conditions were reported in southern regions of Aboisso, Agboville and Divo and in western region of Duekoue.

(Reporting By Loucoumane Coulibaly, editing by Edward McAllister)

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TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya was producing 685,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) on Sunday, up from around 600,000 a day last month, an official from the National Oil Corporation (NOC) said.

Output has risen after a two-year blockade was lifted two weeks ago on major pipelines leading from the western fields of Sharara and El Feel.

Production has been resuming gradually at Sharara, which has a capacity of 330,000 bpd. But there has been no announcement of a restart at El Feel, which can produce 90,000 bpd but where a group of guards has been blocking operations. The NOC official declined to give details on the status of operations at the fields.

National output remains far below the more than 1.6 million bpd that Libya was producing before its 2011 uprising. The NOC says it hopes to raise production to nearly 900,000 bpd by March, but this remains at risk from political conflict.

Libya is one of two members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that is exempted from a recent deal to cut output.

(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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KINSHASA (Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo’s central bank expects GDP to grow by 2.9 percent this year, up from 2.5 percent in 2016, as commodity exports pick up again, it said in a statement on Sunday.

The mining and oil sectors account for some 95 percent of export revenues in Congo, Africa’s top copper producer. Low commodity prices led the central bank to lower its 2016 growth forecast last week for the fourth time from an original projection of 9 percent.

(Reporting By Aaron Ross; Editing by Tim Cocks)

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By Amina Ismail

CAIRO (Reuters) – An OPEC committee responsible for monitoring compliance with a global agreement to reduce oil output will meet in the first half of January, Kuwait’s oil minister said on Thursday.

“We will meet… in January with OPEC and non-OPEC countries and we will coordinate over the method in which (compliance with) the cut will be implemented,” Essam Abdul Mohsen Al-Marzouq told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) in Cairo.

“I personally think that the announcements coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, and Russia are all encouraging signs that they will abide by the cut and hopefully other countries will follow suit.”

Marzouq later clarified that the meeting would take place in the “beginning” or “first half” of January.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers on Dec. 10 reached their first deal since 2001 to curtail oil output jointly and ease a global glut after more than two years of low prices.

OPEC has a long history of cheating on output quotas. The fact that Nigeria and Libya were exempt from the deal due to production-denting civil strife will further pressure OPEC leader Saudi Arabia to shoulder the bulk of supply reductions.

(Reporting by Amina Ismail; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

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By Aaron Maasho and Clement Uwiringiyimana

NAIROBI/KIGALI (Reuters) – Volkswagen is to start producing cars in Kenya and Rwanda and start a ride-hailing service in Kigali, as the German carmaker expands pay-per-use transportation business models in markets where rival Uber has not gained traction.

Emerging markets with poor transportation links have become a key battleground for establishing new mobility services, with Uber competing with newer rivals like Ola, backed by Japan’s Softbank, and China’s Didi Chuxing.

Volkswagen, which is developing electric vehicles and new services as it tries to put its diesel emissions scandal behind it, said on Thursday it had signed a memorandum of understanding in Kigali, the Rwandan capital.

“Volkswagen wants to strengthen its presence in emerging markets. That is why Africa ranks high on our agenda,” said Volkswagen brand chief Herbert Diess.

Rwanda is seen as a good market because competition is less intense. Uber operates in several African countries, including Kenya where it launched in early 2015 and now faces local rivalry.

Volkswagen expanded into ride-hailing in May, when it invested $300 million in Gett, a firm which seeks to outmanoeuvre Uber by refusing to apply “surge” pricing at peak traffic times.

The German company also said it would look at using electric versions of the VW Golf in the Rwandan mobility services business.

AFRICA PUSH

Volkswagen said it had also agreed to set up a vehicle production facility in Rwanda, deepening its local manufacturing operation in Africa where it expects vehicle sales to grow by 40 percent within the next five years.

Volkswagen did not elaborate on the targeted production volumes or mention which models would be built locally.

“There will be an investigation phase which will go on from January until April and May until we have the final business model together and if all looks good we will move ahead and we will see the first cars being assembled by the end of year,” VW’s South Africa Chief Executive Thomas Schaefer said in a news conference in Kigali late on Wednesday.

Volkswagen has been producing cars in Africa since 1951, when it started making the VW Beetle in South Africa.

VW this week said it would start making the Polo Vivo in Thika, re-opening a car assembly plant in Kenya after a four-decade hiatus.

The German carmaker assembled cars in Kenya in the 1960s and 1970s and will now join a number of rivals which already have local assembly operations, including Isuzu, Toyota, Nissan and Mitsubishi.

Kenya’s car market is currently dominated by low-priced second-hand imports from countries such as Japan. It mostly assembles trucks, pick-ups and buses from kits supplied by foreign manufacturers.

The VW assembly plant will begin with the Vivo model and expand to a range of vehicles, with the first car expected to be produced before the end of the year, officials said.

VW will also produce the VW Golf as well as several models from Seat, Skoda in Algeria from 2017 onwards, the company said.

(Additional reporting by Edward Taylor; Editing by Keith Weir, Greg Mahlich)

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