De verwachting van Bloomburg is dat de Zambiaanse kwacha 18% sterker wordt aan het eind van 2010 door een sterk groeiende economie en beursklimaat. De Zambiaanse beurs doet het goed in Afrika en is de snelst groeiende na Botswana en Ghana. De verwachting is dat de koers van 2,700 naar 3,330 gaat stijgen. De kwacha zal dan weer rond de 4,000 voor de dollar uitkomen ipv de 4,700 die het nu doet.
(Adds analyst comments from third paragraph.)
By Janice Kew
March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Zambia’s currency may gain 18 percent and stocks of Africa’s biggest copper producer are likely to rally 15 percent in 2010 as the nation’s economy and earnings improve, Renaissance Capital said.
The southern African country’s Lusaka Stock Exchange All Share Index may climb to 3,200 at the end of 2010, up from 2,794.89 at the end of 2009, after gaining 12 percent in 2009, the Moscow-based brokerage wrote in a research report today. Zambian shares trade at 9.8 times estimated earnings, Rencap said, compared with 12.95 times for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, according to Bloomberg data.
“Economic growth is likely to remain strong in 2010, at about 6.3 percent,” according to the note. “We expect earnings for 2010 to surprise on the upside as corporates recover from the low base in 2009.”
The Zambian kwacha may appreciate to about 4,000 to the dollar by yearend as “foreign direct and portfolio inflows improve and copper prices remain elevated,” the analysts wrote. The currency was 4,725 against the dollar at 12:33 p.m. in Lusaka, according to Bloomberg data.
The kwacha lost 26 percent of its value against the dollar between April 7 and December 24, 2008, as copper prices declined from $8,730 per ton to $2,845 per ton amid the global financial crisis. It was the ninth-worst performance against the dollar of 170 currencies tracked by Bloomberg. Copper accounts for about 10 percent of gross domestic product of Zambia, a landlocked country of 13 million people, and 70 percent of export earnings, according to Standard Bank Group Ltd.
Market Value
The metal used in wiring more than doubled to $7,375 per ton at the end of 2009 from $3,070 per metric ton a year earlier, and is up 1 percent so far in 2010.
The market value of stocks traded in Zambia was worth $5.3 billion at the end of 2009, according to RenCap. Among African countries, the Lusaka exchange ranks behind that of Botswana, the world’s biggest diamond producer with a population of 2 million, and Ghana, the world’s second-largest cocoa producer, in market value, and is bigger than Malawi’s bourse, according to Bloomberg data.
Zambia is likely to have had gross domestic product growth of 6 percent in 2009, compared with about 2 percent for sub- Saharan Africa, according to RenCap.
Best Performers
There is a 60 percent chance that the Lusaka index will reach 3,200 at the end of this year, assuming copper prices remain above $7,000 per metric ton, RenCap said.
A better-than-expected global recovery may drive commodity prices higher and take the index to 3,350, a possibility to which RenCap assigns a 30 percent chance.
The best performing stocks last year were Farmers House Ltd., a Zambian property investor, Zain Zambia, the nation’s biggest mobile-phone operator, and Zambia National Commercial Bank Plc, RenCap said.
--Editors: John Kohut, Gavin Serkin.
To contact the reporters on this story: Janice Kew in Johannesburg at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gavin Serkin at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
