Egyptian investors from business and private sectors today will arrive in the country to visit both Khartoum and Juba from Aug. 30-Sept.9 within the framework of cooperation and commercial exchange between Sudan and Egypt to get acquainted with investment opportunities in the country.

Mohamed Wajdi, general manager of Egyptian trade center in Sudan, said in press statement that the visit was aimed at getting acquainted with investment opportunities in southern Sudan and sitting with south Sudan government officials to brief them on Egyptian investments in the fields of transportation, food industry, tourism and trade and international services.
He indicated opening new horizons between the two sides, in addition to visiting a permanent center for selling Egyptian products expected to be inaugurated at Al-Mualim tower soon in order to be acquainted with the role of the center in supporting and developing future of Egyptian products in Sudan (Sudan Vision).

Barney Jopson, FT

Over the past two weeks beyondbrics has run a series of posts looking at the rise of the emerging market consumer. To round it off it we head to the rawest end of Africa’s wilderness spectrum, where one multinational is trying to create a market for its product out of the dust.

The company is SABMiller, the South African brewer, and its venture is in south Sudan - a desolate region of parched scrub that could soon become the world’s newest country. It’s a branding gamble, and an extreme test of whether taking big risks in tough consumer markets really can yield bigger rewards.

South Sudan’s 9m or so people are still recovering from a fight for independence that froze the region’s development for decades and left it with mass illiteracy, deep poverty, scraps of infrastructure, and tragic healthcare facilities.

Yet in this unpromising environment a small but growing number of consumers are buying the chunky brown bottles of White Bull lager that SABMiller has been brewing in a factory on the outskirts of Juba, south Sudan’s capital, since May 2009.

Imported beer was available before - indeed, SABMiller was trucking in some of its own products from Uganda - but the brewer’s marketing ruse has been to turn south Sudan’s liberation struggle into the foundation of a compelling brand.
Beer was banned in the south for decades while the region suffered at the hands of successive, repressive Islamist regimes in Khartoum.

So after a peace deal in 2005, and the promise of a referendum on independence next January, the beer is seen as a symbol of south Sudan’s impending nationhood, and each sip as a rebuke to the reviled president in Khartoum.

As Ian Alsworth-Elvey, boss of SABMiller’s subsidiary South Sudan Beverages, told the FT earlier this year:

A lot of southerners will say their struggle in the civil war was a struggle to drink alcohol.

The beer sells at the equivalent of $1.10 per 500ml bottle and is bought mainly by men with a steady income, such as street traders or security guards working at aid agencies or the UN.

They tend to drink while sat on plastic furniture inside dingy corrugated iron drinking dens, or in courtyard bars whose concrete walls have been plastered with the White Bull logo at SABMiller’s behest.

Its Juba factory rises like a monument to industrialism out of the terrain around Juba and by the end of 2010 the company wants to increase its production capacity to 70m bottles a year (it churns out soft drinks too).

SABMiller spent $37m on building it and it announced another $3m investment to expand the factory’s capacity last week.

That is money that no western multinational has dared to invest in the unpredictable and occasionally violent region. But it’s hard to judge whether the lager is proving to be a commercial success, because SABMiller won’t give out sales figures.

All Alsworth-Elvey will say is that sales have exceeded all expectations and that he sold more in the three months from May to July this year than in the previous nine months.

In many emerging markets it’s still unusual to see an indigenous mark - or at least one presented as indigenous - outdo the caché often associated with western brands, but Levi’s launch of a new brand for Asia is one sign of that changing.

And Jonathan Oates, an SABMiller spokesman, told beyondbrics that the company sees chances to advance a similar trend in other parts of Africa where it is also launching “local” beer brands.

Go to places such as Angola and you see this nationalistic pride growing. These countries are becoming successful in their own right so people are saying ‘No longer do I want to associate myself with a Portuguese brand. I want to have an Angolan brand.’

As emerging market consumers grow wealthier and more numerous, that is further proof - in case anyone needed reminding - that foreign companies that want to profit from them will need to play by their rules.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON –  A judge who questioned whether Barclays Bank PLC was getting off too easily nonetheless approved a deal Wednesday that will likely enable the financial institution to avoid prosecution on allegations that it engaged in $500 million in illegal transactions with banks in Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma for more than a decade.

Under the arrangement with the Justice Department, Barclays will pay $298 million — half of it to the United States and the rest under an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney's office in New York.

In exchange for the London-based bank's ongoing cooperation, the two criminal charges the bank faces will be deferred and ultimately dropped as long as the financial institution demonstrates that it is complying with U.S. laws.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan expressed concern that no one working at the bank was charged criminally and that the $298 million would come out of the pockets of Barclays' shareholders.

It looks like the bank is "getting a free ride here; that is what the average person probably concludes," Sullivan said.

Justice Department attorney Kevin Gerrity said the deferred prosecution agreement represents a fair and appropriate resolution of the case, balancing the serious nature of the criminal charges and "doing the right thing."

Gerrity said "we looked very hard" to find individuals at the bank who engaged in the alleged criminal conduct.

"There was no paper trail?" Sullivan said. "Senior management has to know who is responsible. ... Someone has to mastermind this."

Gerrity said the bank spent $250 million conducting an internal investigation of the matter.

"They spent $250 million and didn't find anything? That's just shocking," the judge said.

"We did not find anyone" who engaged in criminal conduct, Gerrity said.

Gerrity said senior management did not know of the misconduct until 2006, and disclosed it to the Justice Department. Low-level employees carried out the transactions and it became a question of whether they lacked criminal intent, said David Braff, an attorney representing the bank.

Sullivan declared that "I am not trying to micromanage" the Justice Department, but the judge suggested that prosecuting the bank might have brought pressure to bear in terms of uncovering who was responsible for the alleged criminal conduct.

The judge said at the outset of the court proceeding that he was unfamiliar with deferred prosecution agreements like the one he was being asked to approve. His deep skepticism of the deal turned to acceptance over the course of the hearing, which lasted over an hour.

The Justice Department uses deferred prosecution agreements as an in-between option to obtaining the conviction of a corporation or declining to prosecute altogether.

The bank was accused of violating the Trading with the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

According to court papers in the case, Barclays concealed the transactions that it carried out with banks in the countries, which were under U.S. economic sanctions.

The papers stated that as early as November 1987, banks in the sanctioned countries directed Barclays not to mention their names on payment messages sent to the United States. The papers also said that Barclays' operating procedures educated employees on how to bypass filters designed to flag incoming payment messages involving sanctioned banks.

KHARTOUM (AFP) – Sudan expects to increase its oil production by up to one-third by next year, taking it to as high as 600,000 barrels per day, the country's new oil minister said on Wednesday.

The National

NAIROBI // Sudan is at a crossroads and perhaps no one knows this better than John Paguir. As the undersecretary for trade in the government of Southern Sudan, Mr Paguir’s job is to attract foreign investment in the aspiring nation.

But with tensions mounting between north and south Sudan, a shaky start to an independence referendum and continued conflict in the western Darfur region, this may not be the ideal time to invest anywhere in Sudan.

The unsure fate of Southern Sudan – whether it votes for independence or if the referendum even happens in January as scheduled – as well as that of the rest of Sudan makes Mr Paguir’s job difficult.

“It would be much better for investment if Southern Sudan becomes independent,” he said in a recent interview. “We have resources, yes, but we need to bring investors to develop our land. There is fear. Some say they will wait until after 2011.”

The next five months will be perhaps the most critical period in the recent history of Sudan, Africa’s largest country by land mass and home to 42 million people. The oil-producing south is careening towards a Jan 9 referendum on independence. This is the last step in a 2005 peace deal that ended the country’s 20-year civil war between the Muslim north and Christian south.

A member of the referendum committee said last week that the vote should be delayed, which sparked a backlash from southern leaders who have staked their political careers on delivering independence for the south. 

“The time that is remaining is not enough to hold a referendum,” Tarek Osman al Taher said. “We at the commission will begin the necessary measures to try to hold the referendum on time but we must warn the partners that there is not enough time.”

Several issues need to be resolved before the vote including the demarcation of the border and division of oil revenues between the north and south. There is also the task of organising a free and fair referendum across an underdeveloped region that still sees flare-ups of tribal violence.

A presidential election in April was mostly peaceful but was plagued with technical problems in the south. Juba, the southern capital, has little infrastructure and is ill-prepared to be the capital of an independent nation, according to many westerners who live there.

A delay in the referendum would be a violation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the civil war, southern leaders warned.

“Any proposal to postpone the referendum will be considered a violation of the CPA and would be a threat to the entire peace process,” Pagan Amum, peace minister in the southern government, told reporters in Juba. He added that Southern Sudan would have “other mechanisms to exercise its right to self-determination in the event of any attempt to put off or create obstacles to this referendum”.

Leaders from the north and south began last week to meet to resolve issues of citizenship, currency and international treaties the south would join if it votes for independence.

“Action at the political level to resolve these outstanding questions without further delay is clearly now of the utmost importance,” said Derek Plumbly, head of the Assessment and Evaluation Commission, a Sudanese commission tasked with implementing the peace agreement.

Even if Southern Sudan votes for separation, as most analysts believe will happen, and the process goes smoothly, Khartoum will still be left with a lingering conflict in the western Darfur region. The war between Arab nomads and African tribes over scarce resources has killed about 300,000 people since 2003, according to the United Nations. The International Criminal Court has indicted Omar al Bashir, the Sudanese president, for genocide.

With most of the villages in the vast arid region razed, many Darfuris live in packed, squalid camps near big cities. Last week, Sudan barred aid groups from some of the largest Darfur camps because of clashes between groups in the camps that are divided over the peace process.

Khartoum has been accused using aid as a political tool and withholding the much-needed assistance in order to punish certain groups.

Advocacy groups warned that Southern Sudan’s referendum and the north-south issues are taking the international community’s attention away from the Darfur conflict, even as violence there surges.

“The US and other key countries have largely turned away from serious political engagement in Darfur in favour of the north-south issues,” said John Prendergast, co-founder of The Enough Project, an advocacy group. “By not focusing on an all-Sudan solution, they end up with no solution at all, and the crises bleed on.”

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China is “frightened” of what might happen if Southern Sudan secedes and must strengthen its ties with the region’s leaders to protect its oil assets, said a Southern Sudan official.

News wires  20 August 2010 17:40 GMT

SABMiller said on Friday it would double output at its brewing operations in southern Sudan by the end of the year, a sign of the economic boom taking root in the former war zone.

The decision to lift capacity to 350 000 hectolitres from 180 000 when the Juba-based brewery opened in May 2009 also suggests confidence in the stability of the south, which is likely to vote for independence in a January referendum.

"Many people questioned our logic in building not only the first brewery that southern Sudan had seen for 50 years but also the first manufacturing facility in Juba," said Ian Alsworth-Elvey, managing director of Southern Sudan Beverages Ltd (SSBL).

"However, the business has had a very warm welcome to the country and our beer, soft drinks and water brands have found real traction with consumers," he said.

With its $37 million investment, SABMiller is the largest non-oil investor in the southern part of Africa's biggest country, whose prolonged North-South civil war only ended in 2005. As many as 2 million people were killed.

The peace deal provided for the predominantly Christian and animist south to hold a referendum in Januray 2011 on seceding from the Arab-dominated north.

Mutual distrust is hampering negotiations on how to share Sudan's billions of dollars of external debt and the revenues from oil fields in the south.

The worst case scenario could see the two sides resuming hostilities, with disastrous consequences for east African countries such as Kenya and Uganda, which have benefited from Juba's oil-fuelled boom of the last five years.

The main competition for SSBL's distinctive White Bull lager comes from imported bottles of Tusker, brewed by neighbouring Kenya's East African Breweries, a unit of Diageo, the world's largest drinks group. - Reuters

By Mabior Philip

Juba (Borglobe)...the Governor of the Bank of Sudan has unilaterally reversed paying in hard currency the 50% oil share revenues for the Government of Southern Sudan since July, crumbling the region’s already struggling economy and escalating an upsurge of strained north - south relations.

The President of the Government of Southern Sudan and the First Vice President of the Republic, Salva Kiir, wrote a letter yesterday to President Bashir, asking him to reverse the decision, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, David Deng Athorbei said yesterday.

Under the 2005 land mark peace deal between the north and the south, the Government of Southern Sudan’s 50% share of revenues generated from oil within its territory should be paid in hard currency into accounts managed by the Bank of Southern Sudan (BOSS). Since July, south’s oil share is paid in local currency following the Bank of Sudan’s refusal to pay in hard currency.

Finance Minister said the motive of the central bank is to deliberately deprive the south of hard currency, so that in case it secedes in the nearing independence vote, it should only be left with local currency that have no hard currency back up.

“I can say with clarity that this is a clear attempt to violate the CPA and the motives are not good. These are sinister motives to snapper southern Sudan’s economy”, Deng said in a press briefing.

The effect has been felt since last month, when businessmen had no possibility to buy dollar from private banks and foreign exchange bureaus as the reserves of the Bank of Southern Sudan were helplessly expended.

“As a result of this action, the foreign exchange reserves of BOSS have been seriously depleted and BOSS is unable to supply banks and foreign exchange bureaus with foreign currency, and meet the foreign exchange needs of GOSS”, Deng said in a press statement.

The value of the Sudanese Pound has fallen sharply in the recent days from SDG2.43 to SDG3.10 per dollar and the foreign exchange needed by the business community to pay for imports and to meet their foreign currency obligations and commitments cannot be provided any longer.

“Investor confidence in southern Sudan is eroded as we cannot meet their foreign exchange requirements. The public is unable to send money to their families abroad for school fees or any other purpose”, Deng added.

This, so far, is the second unilateral decision to hold back oil share hard currency for the Government of Southern Sudan after it was taken in June 2008.  The situation was resolved later after a political intervention. However, Deng said “if the National Congress Party insists, then Southern Sudan will sit and act accordingly”.

23-06-10 Sudan's government is reported to be exploring for oil in the war-torn Darfur region, which, if successful, could halt a threatened renewal of one of Africa's bloodiest civil wars.
The secessionist south is expected to vote for independence in a 2011 referendum, part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended 21 years of war in which an estimated 2 mm people have died. But since most of Sudan's oil fields are in the south, the Arab regime in the north cannot afford to let it do so -- unless Khartoum finds its own oil.

The Paris Web site Africa Energy Intelligence reported that the government was concentrating on two key zones in the northern areas it controls -- Darfur in the west and the Red Sea zone in the east.
Images from the Quickbird Satellite indicate that no strikes have been made. But the eastern drive is headed by the Red Sea Operating Corp., a consortium grouping the state-owned Sudapet, the China National Petroleum Corp., Petronas of Malaysia, Express of Nigeria and two Sudanese firms.

Global Witness, the international watchdog group, reported that images from the Landsat satellite showed a grid pattern of seismic activity by oil companies stretching 315 miles across Darfur's desert in the northwest near the Libyan border that began in September 2009. Other images showed oil exploration camps and large storage depots, the non-governmental organization reported.
Several firms have oil concessions in Darfur, Global Witness said. These include the Great Sahara Petroleum Operating Co., a consortium of Saudi Arabian, Yemeni, Sudanese and Jordanian firms.

Government officials said in January that Khartoum wants oil companies to develop a new oilfield in southern Darfur and is planning to offer the zone to investors.
"Were oil to be discovered, it could actually prod the conflicting parties to come to some kind of agreement so that there would then be a basis for exploiting it, and, we would argue, necessarily sharing it in an equitable way," said Global Witness official Mike Davis.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 that ended 21 years of war between the Muslim Arab-dominated north and south, whose population is largely Christian or animist, is generally seen as a "precedent... for sharing oil as a basis for making peace."
The 2005 pact gave the south a measure of autonomy until the future of the country is determined in the referendum set for January. But Khartoum cannot afford to relinquish the south because that will mean being cut off from the region's oil fields. Khartoum depends on the revenue the region produces.

The south, too, is active on the oil front -- trying to find an alternative route to get its oil to market since the only pipeline there runs northward to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. One option that has gained some traction is a new pipeline southward through Uganda to Kenya's Indian Ocean ports of Lamu or Mombasa.
The Japanese, the second biggest buyer of Sudan's oil after China, has offered to build such a pipeline for $ 1.5 bn. Under the 2005 agreement, the ruling National Congress Party in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement agreed that if a majority vote for independence in the referendum, the south will secede so long as at least two-thirds of the registered electorate participates in the poll.

President Omar Beshir warned earlier this month of an "explosive situation" if the south, as expected, chooses independence. The rivalry between north and south has been heating up in recent weeks, with violent clashes reported along the border zones. There have been reports of government troops seeking to take control of some oil wells.
Sudan has oil reserves estimated at the equivalent of 5 bn barrels. It produces around 500,000 bpd, of which 400,000 bpd is exported.

Darfur, an arid desert region in western Sudan, has been devastated since 2003 by a civil war, separate from the north-south conflict. This one is between the government and Darfur tribes who claim Khartoum has neglected the region and is conducting a war of attrition against then.
The United Nations estimates 300,000 people have died and 2.7 mm have been driven from their homes.

Source: http://www.energy-daily.com
 

BEIJING: South Africa has defended China’s surging investment in Africa, saying Beijing is not pursuing a neocolonial policy and its growing interest in the continent is positive, a report said Wednesday.

China has been criticised over its support for unsavoury governments in places such as Sudan and Zimbabwe and its willingness to ignore governance, human rights and the environment in its pursuit of natural resources.South African President Jacob Zuma, who is leading a delegation of 350 business executives and a number of key ministers, on Wednesday reiterated that China is a “key strategic partner for South Africa”, which is the continent’s biggest economy. afp