Africa Briefs

Nigeria cuts benchmark oil forecastNigeria has cut its forecast for its benchmark crude oil price, citing expectations that the global oil market will be oversupplied next year, its finance minister said on Tuesday.Africa's largest economy is also the continent's biggest oil exporter and relies on crude sales for around 90% of its foreign exchange. Low oil prices pushed it into a recession in 2016 from which it emerged a year later, and economic growth remains low.Finance minister Zainab Ahmed said she had lowered a forecast for Nigeria's benchmark price next year to US$55 per barrel from US$60 per barrel, in part "to cushion against an unexpected price shock".Speaking as the government prepared its medium-term expenditure framework - a plan it uses to prepare Nigeria's budget - she said the lowered price expectations were due to "strong indications" of an oversupplied oil market in 2020.Ahmed said Nigeria is producing roughly 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and condensates. It has agreed a cap of 1.685 million bpd of crude oil with the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).Nigeria's petroleum minister, when asked about current overproduction on Tuesday at the World Energy Congress in Abu Dhabi, said the country will do what OPEC asks it to do. – Nampa/ReutersEgypt plans billions in international bondsEgypt intends to issue international bonds worth US$3 billion to US$7 billion in the 2019/20 financial year, finance minister Mohamed Maait has said.Egypt is still pushing to diversify the currencies in which it issues bonds to ensure hedging within the portfolio, Maait said during an economic conference in Cairo.The country has borrowed heavily from abroad since a US$12 billion package was agreed with the IMF in 2016. It faces a tough repayment schedule, analysts say.Maait said Egypt's ratio of debt to gross domestic product is on a downward trend and should drop to 77.5% by the end of June 2022. The debt-to-GDP ratio was at 90.2% in the fiscal year that ended in June, he said."We would love to go for yuan and yen," Maait told Reuters in a separate interview on the sidelines of the Euromoney Egypt conference. – Nampa/Reuters

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