Togo’s National Employers’ Council (CNP-Togo) and executives from the International Business Bank -Togo (IBB) want to activate the guarantee line of the African Solidarity Fund (ASF). The two parties discussed the matter last week, on April 6, in Lomé. 

IBB’s top management, which is for the move, is working with CNP-Togo on a memorandum of understanding that should define how the guarantee should be exploited.

On November 11, 2021, the BTCI became IBB after its purchase by IB Holding (July 2021) was sealed.

 Esaïe Edoh

Over the past month, global food commodity prices reached their highest level ever and the pace has been maintained in the past weeks.

“The FAO Food Price Index averaged 159.3 points in March, up 12.6 percent from February when it had already reached its highest level since its inception in 1990,” the FAO warned. The Rome-based UN body said the surge was mostly driven by prices of commodities like vegetable oil, cereals, meat, sugar, and dairy products. 

The Russia-Ukraine war’s impact on maize and wheat prices

Between February and March, world prices of wheat and corn both soared by nearly 20%, reaching a new record high, the same as sorghum and barley, according to the latest data. 

The FAO Cereal Price Index leaped by 17.1% from February to March, notably due to significant increases in wheat prices. A situation that is directly linked to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as the two countries, together, accounted for about 30% of global wheat exports, and 20% of global maize exports in the past three years, according to FAO estimates. The war also affected sowing in Ukraine and pushed Russia to reduce its wheat exports significantly; this could worsen supply pressures throughout the rest of this year. 

Togo, while almost self-sufficient regarding maize - the country’s most consumed cereal, can’t say the same for rice, which it mainly imports from Asia, or wheat, which it gets mostly from Russia. 

Indeed, Russia was, over the past three years, Togo’s largest wheat supplier, providing the West African country with 61% of its wheat imports. In 2020, Togo bought nearly $12 million of wheat and meslin from Russia.

Besides getting less wheat from Russia, Togo has been facing, since the end of 2021, inflation marked by a rise in prices of petroleum products and other imported goods.

Togo launches agricultural campaign

In this context, the government announced a battery of measures aimed at helping the Togolese people be more resilient to inflation. Already, the authorities are undertaking controls to prevent speculation on the importation of goods such as wheat.

In Togo, the month of March is the planting season, with the short rainy season beginning. For the just-started agricultural season, the government said it will keep subsidizing fertilizers, to make things easier for farmers.

Ayi Renaud Dossavi

Nine more teachers joined the list of 137 teachers excluded from the Togolese education system and redeployed in the administration. The names of the concerned were released on April 5th by the Ministry of Public Service and Dialogue in a decree on administrative measures.  

Like their 137 fellow colleagues, the nine teachers also respect the four-day work stoppage order issued on Tuesday, April 5, by the Togo Teachers' Union (SET). The union is not legally recognized by the government, which considers its calls to strike illegal, per the Labor Code and the provisions of the decree of February 23, 2022, on the representativeness of professional unions and the exercise of the right to strike in Togo.

The measure, according to Minister Gilbert Bawara, for the time being, only concerns "the most prominent members of the SET."

It should be noted that despite the government's sanctions, the SET is maintaining its strike over four days.

 Esaïe Edoh

As part of the second phase of the Project to Support High School Reforms (PAREC II) in Togo, 384 classrooms are being built in the Maritime, Plateaux, and Savanes regions. The construction was officially launched last Monday by the minister of primary and secondary education, Dodzi Kokoroko.

The project covers 130 public high schools and it will help increase their capacity and conditions of reception, as well as improve governance and make them more attractive. 

Let’s emphasize that a few months ago, in December, the government launched a project to build 30,000 classrooms across the nation. Aimed at “increasing school accommodation capacity,” it falls under the 2020-2025 roadmap. 

Regarding the PAREC project, its first phase was implemented between 2014 and 2018. Backed by the French Development Agency (AFD), this phase enabled the construction of 160 classrooms.

Lomé hosted last Monday, April 4th, a workshop for the elaboration of the gender-sensitive budget for the year 2023. During the session, participants - gender experts, senior officials, technical and financial partners of Togo - aimed to better promote women and gender equality in the budgeting and allocation of state resources.

"Gender budgeting consists in applying the integrated approach of equality between women and men to the financial aspect of public policies," said Kofi Agbenoxevi Paniah, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, at the beginning of the meeting. The official especially mentioned Togo’s efforts to support and strengthen gender equity, over more than a decade now; efforts consolidated in the first axis of the Togo 2025 roadmap.

2023: new "gender-sensitive" ministries

In Togo, the 2022 budget law came with a gender-sensitive budget covering six (06) pilot ministries, notably the ministries of grassroots development, primary and secondary education, health, social action, agriculture, and public works.

In 2023, two ministries (the ministries of justice and higher education) and two institutions (the Prime Minister's Office and the Court of Auditors) will be added, according to Kofi Agbenoxevi Paniah.

The elaboration of the gender-sensitive budget is supported by the World Bank (through the PAGE project) and the European Union. The latter’s representative, Joachin Tasso Villalonga, praised the government "for putting Togo at the forefront of GRB (Gender Responsive Budgeting) in the region and welcomed their ambition to extend it to all public institutions.” 

In Togo, the development of a gender-sensitive budget was instituted on April 7, 2020.

Ayi Renaud Dossavi

Throughout the past month, 1,354 new businesses were registered in Togo, according to data from the Center for Business Formalities (CFE). Compared to February 2022 when the CFE recorded 1,278 new registrations, March’s figure represents a 6% increase; and it is 4% more than in January (1,300).

Looking at the men to women ratio, men officially set up 978 businesses last month, while women registered 376. As for the foreigner to native ratio, the former registered 216 businesses, while the remaining 1,138 were created by Togolese citizens.

Quarterly, 3,932 businesses were created in January-March 2022. This is about 4% less than in 2021, over the same period (4,087).

Yearly, 13,770 businesses were registered at the CFE in 2021, up 9% year-on-year (12,500 in 2020).

Esaïe Edoh

To shield economic operators (importers and exporters) against fluctuating foreign exchange rates, Orabank Togo recently launched a new product called “forward exchange”’(change à terme). The new offer, which the lender claims to be its “flagship product of the year”, will fix, in advance, the exchange rate in the framework of currency purchase.  

In effect, it will be possible to fix the rate of the currency concerned against the local currency, for a specific future maturity or a series of possible partial payments. For the subsidiary of the pan-African banking group Oragroup, "it's the perfect momentum, especially with everything that's going on internationally" (Russian-Ukrainian conflict, editor's note).

“We have noticed that the dollar, which is our main payment currency abroad, besides the euro, has undergone a lot of fluctuations and in proportions still quite significant,” said the director of Orabank Togo’s trading room. 

Available in two options, "dry" and "flexible", the new product will initially be operational for three foreign currencies: the US and Canadian dollars, and the British pound. 

In Togo, Orabank regularly occupies the top positions in the banking landscape. The institution was crowned "Best Bank in Togo in 2021" by the financial magazine Global Finance, and claimed for its last fiscal year, a total balance sheet of 746 billion CFA francs (36 billion more than in 2020) and an outstanding loan portfolio valued at 381 billion, slightly down. 

Octave A. Bruce  

From 2019 to the end of 2021, the value of leasing transactions in Togo has soared from CFA600 million to CFA11 billion.

“(...) New leasing operations have swollen to 11 billion in 2021, compared to 0.6 billion in 2019, the year that Togo adopted the law on leasing,” said Sani Yaya, Togo's Minister of Economy and Finance, in his speech at the first National Credit Council (CNC) of this year, with financial actors in Togo.

The growth can be mostly associated with African Lease Togo (ALT), which started offering leasing and factoring services in the country early in 2021.

Leasing is a type of financial operation that enables the financing of equipment with no prior contribution. For people who do not want to take a loan from the bank, it is a very practical alternative.

ALT values its portfolio of operations at around CFA10 billion. According to the ministry of economy and finance, the firm, leasing activities make up more than 90% of this portfolio. 

Before the Covid outbreak, in 2019, the Togolese subsidiary of African Lease Group estimated that Togo’s leasing market was worth CFA116 billion, referring to data attributed to the Directorate of Transport of Togo.

Ayi Renaud Dossavi