RABAT (Reuters) &#8211; The coronavirus crisis is expected to expand Morocco’s informal economy of people who work for cash, reducing tax revenue and leaving many without social protection, the head of the state planning agency and economists said.



More than a third of Moroccan workers are already in the informal economy, doing manual or domestic labour, driving taxis or selling in the streets, accounting for 14% of gross domestic product, according to the agency.



However, the crisis is expected to expand this informal economy as people lose their jobs in companies and consumers seek the cheaper goods and services provided by workers who are not registered with the state’s pension fund.



Morocco, with 16,047 coronavirus cases, last month allowed cafes, restaurants and other services to resume activity at half capacity except in provinces where infections remain high. Last week, it extended an emergency decree giving local authorities leeway in taking restrictive measures until Aug. 10.



Unemployment is expected to surge to a rate of 14.8% in 2020 from about 9.2% before the pandemic, the agency said.



Fatima Hamdane, 53, who lost her job as a worker at a car parts manufacturing plant&nbsp;in Casablanca, said she would work as a cleaner even if her employer did not pay social security duties. She has diabetes and has already skipped medical checks because of her hard financial situation.



“I knocked on many doors, but couldn’t find a job,” she said. “Most have rejected me because of my age.”



Ahmed Lahlimi, the planning agency chief, told Reuters that while the number of people moving into the informal economy was expected to grow, the agency did not have any updated figures estimating the extent of the problem.



The informal economy already costs the state 34 billion dirhams ($3.4 billion) in annual tax losses, Finance Minister Mohamed Benchaaboun said.



Morocco’s fiscal deficit stood at $2.3 billion at the end of May with revenue down and spending up because of the crisis. It is expected to widen to 7.5% of gross domestic product in 2020 from 4.1% last year while the economy is expected to shrink by 5%, according to the government’s reviewed budget.



The Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises, a business group, says the informal economy puts 2.9 million jobs at risk in formal companies by undercutting their costs. In May, it recommended offering tax incentives to make more companies register officially.



“In the past, the state has tolerated the informal economy in times of social tensions such as during the 2011 pro-democracy protests,” said Rachid Awraz, of the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis.



But, in the long run, it leaves workers without social protection and prey to poverty in addition to its low added value for the economy, he said.



Labour Minister Mohamed Amekraz did not answer Reuters requests for comment.

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Crisis-hit Moroccans join ‘informal economy’ as job market shrinks

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) &#8211; At a centuries-old vineyard overlooked by South Africa’s Drakenstein mountain, the country’s biggest single wine exporter Distell is battling a problem of plenty.



Prestigious wines, such as Nederburg, are bottled at the vineyard in Paarl, just outside Cape Town, and shipped locally and worldwide.



But the shipping can’t keep pace with the combined impact of an abundant harvest and lockdown disruption that has led to a glut that sits maturing in French oak barrels or stored in metal vats at wine estates.



South Africa, one of the top 10 wine producers, has around 240 million litres of stock across the industry, said executives at Distell, which itself has 40 million litres.



“It is a massive problem&#8230; that could take at least two years to resolve,” Distell CEO Richard Rushton said.



He told an investor call in June the impact on prices in the industry could be severe and said the company had lost some of its listings in wine outlets abroad as exports were halted.



South Africa also banned domestic alcohol sales as part of lockdown restrictions begun in March. Early in June it allowed sales during limited trading hours, but President Cyril Ramaphosa reimposed a sales ban from July 13 as new infections surged.



Industry body Vinpro said some 3 billion rand ($177.54 million) in sales had been lost in the first nine weeks of restrictions. Exports have resumed, but there is a backlog in the Cape Town port, it said.



Rushton said Distell hoped online sales would help and it has also begun producing alcohol-based sanitisers.



Even in the best of times, managing wine stocks in finite cellar space requires thinking a few moves ahead, but not usually as many.



“When you start off with oversupply, then it’s chess from day one,” Distell’s head winemaker Niel Groenewald said.



He faces a situation unprecedented in his two decades of experience and perhaps since the founding of the Nederburg estate in 1791.

Wines of South Africa CEO: What the resumption of wine exports means for the industry

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The government has approved a rescue plan for the ailing South African Airways that could cost taxpayers up to R16.3 billion, and is likely to be controversial. Already taxpayers have propped up the loss-making airline to the tune of R30 billion, in the last decade. Part of the plan is to get private money to fund the rescue plan and the appointment of a new interim CEO, Phillip Saunders. Guy Leitch, Editor of SA Flyer &#038; FlightCom magazines joins CNBC Africa for more.

Government approves SAA rescue plan

Government approves SAA rescue plan, appoints new interim CEO

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The Foschini Group has put in an offer to acquire 371 Jet Stores, from Edcon, in a deal worth R480 million. In April, Edcon filed for voluntary business rescue, as it faced a distressed balance sheet. Meanwhile, on its trading update, TFG has reported a consolidated retail turnover decline of 43 per cent for the three months ended 27 June, due to the COVID-19 Lockdowns in SA, the UK and Australia. Anthony Thunström, Group Chief Executive Officer, The Foschini Group joins CNBC Africa for more.

TFG CEO on the decision to buy Jet Stores from Edcon

Rwanda sets out COVID-19 economic recovery plan

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Last year helicopter aviation company Akagera Aviation launched several new programs and services including Rwanda’s first scheduled flights to three major national parks and a pilot training academy. Now a year later the industry has been dealt a blow that no one could’ve foreseen, CNBC Africa spoke with the company’s Business Development Manager, Habba Hadijah Kamwesiga on how they decide to rebound now that Covid-19 measures are being relaxed.

This is how Rwanda’s Akagera Aviation plans to bounce back from COVID-19 crisis

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In a move to stimulate local production of maize, the Central Bank of Nigeria has issued a directive to lenders to immediately stop processing Form M documents for the importation of maize into the country. Ayodeji Balogun, CEO of Afex Commodities Exchange joins CNBC Africa for more.

Nigeria halts access to forex for maize imports

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LAGOS/ABUJA (Reuters) &#8211; Early one evening, Folasade Fadare and her team of four disease hunters piled into a van and headed for Okegun, a rural community down a narrow potholed road in eastern Lagos state.



A coronavirus patient had visited the area, and it was their task to find anyone exposed, isolate them and trace their contacts. The team quickly realised the job was too big: more than 100 people needed to be interviewed and tested.



Ultimately, only the two sickest people, feverish and gasping for air, were sent to hospital to be isolated and tested. The rest were told what symptoms to watch for and urged to stay home for two weeks.



“We are not enough,” said Fadare, an epidemiologist who has battled Ebola and Lassa fever for more than 20 years.



Contact tracers like Fadare are among the few safeguards standing between Africa’s fragile public health systems and a pandemic that could quickly overwhelm them. Infections are rising, but many governments have been easing lockdowns to save their economies.



In Nigeria, medics who do tracing say they are near breaking point.



Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have increased tenfold to over 32,000 since the government began easing restrictions in May, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says. At least 740 have died.



Lagos, Nigeria’s largest state and epicentre of its outbreak, has 200 tracers for a population of 25 million. That is fewer than one per 100,000 people, compared to around 14 per 100,000 in Turkey.



The state’s health commissioner, Akin Abayomi, dismissed concerns about the scale of its tracing efforts.



“We recruit contact tracers as necessary. We have a large pool of primary health care staff and volunteers to select from,” he said in a text message, adding there were 1,000 people in the pool.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">POLIO NETWORK</h3>



Nigeria’s experience with infectious diseases meant it could quickly mobilize veteran epidemiologists like Fadare along with hundreds of medics and community volunteers already embedded in remote communities to fight polio.



But nothing prepared them for this epidemic, Fadare said. More than 12,400 cases have been confirmed in Lagos state alone &#8211; any one potentially infecting scores of others, she said. Members of her team say they are overwhelmed, receiving updates about infected people as late as midnight.



Unlike South Korea and Singapore, which used contact tracing apps, Nigeria has had to resort to more labour-intensive methods. Only a quarter of the population uses smartphones.



A team of medics is tasked to visit each contact to verify symptoms, identify contacts and ask them to stay at home for 14 days. The team then checks in with the person each day by phone, to monitor compliance. If the person reports symptoms, they will be referred to another team for testing.



However, the stigma associated with COVID-19 means many are keen to avoid tracers, Fadare said. People commonly turn off their phones, deny their identity and lie about when they last saw coronavirus patients.Slideshow&nbsp;(4 Images)



Such fears can be justified. In Abuja, one man’s neighbours moved out after he was tested. Others suspected of being infected have been told to leave, said Ramatu Abdu-Aguye, head of tracing in the capital.



So the teams keep a low profile, using unmarked vans to visit homes.



Nigeria’s low testing rates are making the tracers’ job harder, they say. Just over 183,000 tests have been conducted in a country of 200 million, according to the NCDC. A government target announced in April was for 2 million tests by the end of July.



Olujimi Oyetomi, a Nigerian health ministry spokesman, said more testing machines and materials were being deployed.



Adding to the challenges, 10 tracers working for Fadare contracted COVID-19 and had to take up to three weeks off.



As lockdowns ease, many Nigerians are moving around and ignoring safety measures.



Traffic jams have returned to Lagos, increasing the time it takes tracers to reach contacts, many of whom are already hard to find because their homes have no formal address.



Outside the Lagos clinic where Fadare’s teams meet, life goes on as normal. Men sit around on plastic chairs, women sell instant noodles, and yellow minibuses weave through the streets. Nobody keeps their distance, and those who wear masks pull them down to speak.



Fadare fears they don’t realise the danger: “The truth is that we are all at risk now.”

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Nigerian virus hunters in race against COVID-19 in Africa’s giant

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The Medical Guild in Lagos in on a three day warning strike to call attention to the need for improved safety and welfare among other factors. Joining CNBC Africa for more is Dr. Oluwajimi Sodipo, Chairman, Lagos Medical Guild.

Lagos doctors embark on 3-day warning strike

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa will introduce a universal basic income grant, the Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Zulu said on Monday, unexpectedly reviving a two-decades-old plan with the aim of supporting millions of unemployed.



The country already has one of the continent’s most generous social security nets, but the COVID-19 pandemic has added to the need both to protect its fragile economy and its high number of unemployed.



Zulu did not give details of how the grant would be funded or its size, but told a virtual press briefing it would be paid “post-October”.



Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the government had planned to spend 309.5 billion rand ($18.51 billion) on social security payments this year.



The pandemic prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce in late March a temporary top-up of those grants by up to 300 rand, including a 350 rand unemployment grant, lasting six months.



A universal grant had seemed unlikely, given soaring public debt and following an emergency budget that proposed sticking to 230 billion in spending cuts.



The treasury did not immediately respond to telephone calls and emails from Reuters seeking comment.



The universal grant will target around 33 million people between the ages of 18 and 59. South Africa’s poverty line, including non-food expenses, calculated by Statistics South Africa, is around 1,270 rand ($76.04). That would put the annual cost at roughly 42 billion rand, calculations by Reuters found.



Isobel Frye, director of the South African-based Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute and a Minimum Wage Commissioner, said the universal grant had been discussed by government over the last 10 months, but the treasury had been reluctant to fund it.



“It was unexpected but incredibly welcome. It suggests there’s been a lot of reflection about the inadequacy of the 350 rand COVID grant,” Frye said.



($1 = 16.7233 rand)

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South Africa to introduce universal income grant – minister

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The South Africa government has reinstated an alcohol ban and has made adjustments to travel restrictions under level 3 lock-down, in the hope of taking strain off from the healthcare sector and further reopening the economy. Joining CNBC Africa for more is the Black Business Council Treasurer General, Bonolo Ramokhele.

COVID-19 lock-down: Why the Black Business Council supports alcohol ban

GENEVA/ZURICH (Reuters) &#8211; The new coronavirus pandemic raging around the globe will worsen if countries fail to adhere to strict healthcare precautions, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday.



“Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from the U.N. agency’s headquarters in Geneva.



“If basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go &#8211; it is going to get worse and worse and worse.”



Global infections stand at 13 million, according to a Reuters tally, with more than half a million deaths.



Tedros, whose leadership has been criticised by U.S. President Donald Trump, said that of 230,000 new cases on Sunday, 80% were from 10 nations, and 50% from just two countries.



The United States and Brazil have been worst hit.



WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan said some places in the Americas may need “limited or geographically focused lockdowns that suppress transmission in specific areas where transmission is frankly out of control”.



He urged countries not to make schools into a political football, saying schools could safely reopen once the virus had been suppressed.



Tedros said the WHO had still not received formal notification of the U.S. pullout announced by Trump. The U.S. president says the WHO pandered to China, where the COVID-19 disease was first detected, at the start of the crisis.



Trump, who at the weekend wore a protective face mask in public for the first time, has himself been accused by political opponents of not taking the coronavirus seriously enough, something he denies.



A two-member WHO advance team in China to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, first discovered in the city of Wuhan, is in quarantine, as per standard procedure, before beginning work with Chinese scientists, Ryan said.

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WHO warns of perpetual worsening of COVID-19 crisis

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Tech stocks have been hitting record highs in recent days, rallying by almost 16 per cent on the S&#038;P 500 this year. Analysts have reported that the major tech companies will rally for as long as they can as investors are insulated from the worst of the Covid-19 market crisis. Byron Lotter, Portfolio Manager at Vestact joins CNBC Africa for more.

Why Vestact is bullish on tech

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa’s economy will contract by more than initially projected, likely shrinking 6.9% in 2020 compared to an earlier forecast of a 4.5% contraction, ratings agency S&amp;P Global Ratings said on Monday in a report.



South Africa has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Africa, with more than 270,000 infections, and 4,000 deaths, and is now recording the fourth-largest daily increase in new cases worldwide at more than 12,000 per day.



“The pandemic situation in the country has worsened since our previous macroeconomic update, leading to a further hit to confidence, which was already low before the pandemic, amid lack of growth and concerns about the fiscal trajectory,” the firm said.



S&amp;P along with the other two main ratings firms, Moody’s and Fitch, already rate the country’s debt at below investment status, or junk. S&amp;P cut its rating one notch to the third tier of non-investment grade, BB-, in April, with a stable outlook.



S&amp;P’s growth forecast is however more optimistic than National Treasury’s prediction of a 7.2% contraction this year. Treasury predicts debt to gross domestic product will breach 80% as government borrows more to fund its response to the pandemic.



To cushion the economic blow of the pandemic on the economy, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a 500 billion rand ($28.86 billion) relief package in April, equivalent to 10% of South Africa’s GDP.



“The sizeable fiscal package will only partially mitigate the economic toll, but coupled with lower revenues, will lead to a significant increase in government debt, further impairing public finances,” the ratings agency said.

Coronavirus

Crisis-hit Moroccans join ‘informal economy’ as job market shrinks

South Africa’s Distell plays chess to beat lockdown wine glut

Damilola Ogunbiyi on how to bridge the energy gap in Africa

Government approves SAA rescue plan, appoints new interim CEO

TFG CEO on the decision to buy Jet Stores from Edcon

Rwanda sets out COVID-19 economic recovery plan

This is how Rwanda’s Akagera Aviation plans to bounce back from COVID-19 crisis

Nigeria halts access to forex for maize imports

How Rwanda is leveraging technology in the fight against COVID-19

Egypt’s nominee for WTO top job speaks on the state of global trade

Nigerian virus hunters in race against COVID-19 in Africa’s giant

Lagos doctors embark on 3-day warning strike

South Africa to introduce universal income grant – minister

COVID-19 lock-down: Why the Black Business Council supports alcohol ban

WHO warns of perpetual worsening of COVID-19 crisis

Why Vestact is bullish on tech

South Africa’s economy to shrink 6.9% in 2020 – S&P Global Ratings

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Coronavirus

Crisis-hit Moroccans join ‘informal economy’ as job market shrinks

South Africa’s Distell plays chess to beat lockdown wine glut

Damilola Ogunbiyi on how to bridge the energy gap in Africa

Government approves SAA rescue plan, appoints new interim CEO

TFG CEO on the decision to buy Jet Stores from Edcon

Rwanda sets out COVID-19 economic recovery plan

This is how Rwanda’s Akagera Aviation plans to bounce back from COVID-19 crisis

Nigeria halts access to forex for maize imports

How Rwanda is leveraging technology in the fight against COVID-19

Egypt’s nominee for WTO top job speaks on the state of global trade

Nigerian virus hunters in race against COVID-19 in Africa’s giant

Lagos doctors embark on 3-day warning strike

South Africa to introduce universal income grant – minister

COVID-19 lock-down: Why the Black Business Council supports alcohol ban

WHO warns of perpetual worsening of COVID-19 crisis

Why Vestact is bullish on tech

South Africa’s economy to shrink 6.9% in 2020 – S&P Global Ratings

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