JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African platinum miner Royal Bafokeng Platinum Ltd (RBPlat) said it will issue a 1.2 billion rand ($93 million) convertible bond to fund an increase in production.

RBPlat, a mid-tier producer of platinum group metals, said it will set the conversion price at between 30 and 35 percent premium to Wednesday’s average trading price, which would also take into account the number shares traded.

RBPlat is a unit of Royal Bafokeng Holdings, which manages commercial assets for the Royal Bafokeng Nation, a community of black South Africans that owns 1,200 square kilometres in one of the world’s biggest platinum deposits.

The company said it would use the money to increase production at its main Styldrift underground mine from 50,000 tonnes a month to 150,000 tonnes a month by the end of 2018.

Shares in RBPlat were 5.2 percent lower at 33 rand by 0700 GMT, reflecting the dilutive impact of the bonds.

If all bonds are exchanged for shares, they would dilute the existing shareholding by about 13.5 percent.

The 2022 bonds are expected to carry a coupon of between 6.5 and 7 percent and is payable twice a year.

RBPlat, rated Baa3 with a stable outlook by Moody’s, said its biggest shareholder, Royal Bafokeng Holdings, agreed to underwrite bonds valued at as much as 621 million rand.

Morgan Stanley and Rand Merchant Bank, a unit of FirstRand, are joint bookrunners and global coordinators.

($1 = 12.9526 rand)

(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Alexander Smith)

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LUANDA (Reuters) – The Chevron operated Mafumeira Sul field in Angola began oil production in October 2016 and will start supplying gas for export in the second quarter of this year, state energy firm Sonangol said on Wednesday.

The Mafumeira Sul project has the capacity to produce 150,000 barrels of oil and 350 million cubic metres of natural gas per day, Sonangol said. The gas will be exported as Liquefied Natural Gas.

French firm Total and Italy’s Eni hold minority stakes in the project.

(Reporting by Herculano Coroado; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by James Macharia)

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LONDON (Reuters) – Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo) halted production at Nigeria’s Bonga oil field on March 4 for maintenance that will last at least a month.

SNEPCo said in a statement that Bonga, which has capacity to produce 225,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil and 150 million standard cubic feet (scf) of gas, is expected to resume production at at some point in April, without giving further details.

Market sources had expected work on the field because there were no exports planned in March, compared with typical exports of roughly 200,000 barrels per day (bpd). Bonga produced an average of 192,500 bpd of oil in 2015, according to the latest annual data from Nigerian state oil company NNPC.

(Reporting By Libby George; Editing by David Goodman)

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ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria will open up its government-owned airports to private investment, the minister of aviation said on Monday, as the capital’s airport prepares to close for repairs after years of neglect.

All government-owned airports will be offered to investors who have “the wherewithal, the know-how, the technology, the capacity, the ability, the finance to put up huge fantastic edifices as airports with everything including hotels, just the way you see them abroad,” said Hadi Sirika, Nigeria’s aviation minister, at a news conference in the capital of Abuja.

Sirika did not specify when the government airports would be opened to investment, or provide any other details.

Abuja’s airport is set to close for six weeks for repairs on the runway, after it had become so damaged that international carriers were pulling their services or warning they may soon have to.

Two days before the repairs begin, workers were still needing to fit electrics, seating and toilets to a new terminal at Kaduna, which will handle the capital’s air traffic but lacks capacity.

(Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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By Arpan Varghese

(Reuters) – Gold held steady early on Monday, supported by safe haven buying amid rising geopolitical tensions over North Korea and a weaker dollar.

Investors are closely watching developments after the reclusive state fired fired four ballistic missiles into the sea off Japan’s northwest coast, days after it promised retaliation over U.S.-South Korean military drills.

“We expect gold to trade with a bid tone in early Asia on safe-haven flows, following a series of North Korean missile launches this morning,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at OANDA.

The dollar also dipped in Asian trading, as investors locked in gains after the greenback’s rise last week on growing expectations of a U.S. interest rate hike this month. The dollar index was down 0.2 percent to 101.39.

Spot gold was little changed at $1,234.20 per ounce at 0215 GMT. The metal had hit $1,222.51, the lowest since Feb. 15, in the previous session on signals of a hike in U.S. interest rates this month.

U.S. gold futures were up 0.7 percent to $1,234.6.

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s long-stalled ‘liftoff’ of interest rates may finally get airborne this year as policymakers from Chair Janet Yellen to regional leaders across the United States signaled that the era of easy money is drawing to a close.

Yellen capped off a seemingly coordinated push from the central bank when she cemented the view that the Fed will raise rates at its next meeting on March 14-15, and likely be able to move faster after that than it has in years.

Spot gold may revisit its March 3 low of $1,222.51 per ounce, as its drop from the Feb. 27 high of $1,263.80 has not completed, according to Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.

Meanwhile, hedge funds and money managers boosted their net long position in COMEX gold to the highest in more than three months in the week to Feb. 28, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday.

In other precious metals, spot silver fell 0.5 percent to $17.87 per ounce, while platinum inched lower by 0.1 percent, to $993.50.

Palladium was up 0.5 percent at $775.00. The metal had hit $752.72, the lowest since Feb. 6 in the previous session.

(Reporting by Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Pullin)

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LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigeria’s trade balance turned positive in the fourth quarter of 2016 after exports rose by more than half, the national bureau of statistics said on Saturday, the first positive reading since the same quarter a year ago.

But Africa’s largest economy shrank 1.5 percent over the course of the full year due to lower oil revenues and a shortage of hard currency, its first annual contraction in quarter of a century.

With limited manufacturing capacity, Nigeria imports most of what it consumes. Fourth-quarter imports rose 46.4 percent from the previous year to 2.31 trillion naira ($7.6 billion), the statistics bureau said.

But exports more than compensated for that rise, jumping 53.5 percent in value terms from a year earlier to 2.98 trillion naira, the statistics bureau said.

The balance of trade for the fourth quarter was 671 billion naira. The net trade balance stood at minus 290 billion naira ($953 million) for all of 2016.

($1 = 304.2000 naira)

(Reporting by Paul Carsten; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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CAIRO (Reuters) – Remittances from Egyptians abroad increased by 20 percent year-on-year in the three months following the country’s November currency float, totalling about $5 billion, a central bank statement said on Monday.

Remittances for the month of January were up 23 percent year-on-year, reaching $1.6 billion, the statement said.

The central bank floated the Egyptian pound on Nov. 3, aiming to unlock foreign currency inflows and crush a black market for dollars that had discouraged people from channelling foreign currency through the banking system.

(Reporting by Ehab Farouk; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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CAIRO (Reuters) – Germany has offered Egypt $500 million to support its economic programme and medium-sized and small businesses, the Egyptian ministry of investment and international cooperation said on Friday.

“It was agreed with the German side (that they would) provide $250 million to support the economic programme … as well as $250 million to support several other sectors, including micro-enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises, ” it said in a statement.

The support will come in the form of grants and concessional funds, a government official told Reuters. The German offer came during a visit to Egypt by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

(Reporting by Ehab Farouk; Editing by Gareth Jones)

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