FINANCE EA DAILY BUSINESS NEW SUMMARY

The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) has teamed up with four other African regulators to tackle competition and consumer protection concerns in digital markets.

The commitment by competition regulators from Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa was ratified during a two-day Africa Heads of Competition Dialogue (AHCD) meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, on February 17 and 18, 2022.

In a statement released Friday, they said that digital markets are transforming global economies rapidly by disrupting traditional markets, presenting enormous challenges for competition law enforcement.

“Accordingly, as regulators on the continent, we are required to consider how digital markets impact on domestic participation in the local and global economy and the terms of that participation, beyond simply as a consumer of global tech firm services,” the statement reads……Business Daily

The Sacco regulator is eyeing more than Sh137 million from the over 180 new societies that have come under its oversight.

Non-withdrawable deposit-taking entities will start paying an annual fee to the Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority (Sasra) that will see the regulator raise at least Sh137.98 million every year.

The Saccos will be required to pay a levy of not more than 0.165 percent of their surplus annually. Sasra reckons the new levy currently being debated by stakeholders ahead of its gazettement will boost the regulator’s financial health at a time the Treasury has cut cash transfers to the authority.

The regulator has for the past few years been relying on an annual levy collected from the deposit-taking Saccos but this has not been enough to cover expenses after Treasury cut its funding…….Business Daily

 

The Communications and Multimedia Appeals Tribunal has ruled that Safaricom has a right to block illegal international calls routed through local numbers, handing the giant telco victory in a long-drawn feud with two smaller rivals.

Another small telco, Geonet Communications was also caught in the row because some of the Elige customers allegedly made calls through its calling cards. CA had ruled that the Safaricom rivals were required to reveal the location of their customers so as to pay the required costs of transmitting international calls to local mobile providers……Nation Media

Winston Churchill made a famous observation during the bleakest days of World War II: Never let a good crisis go to waste.

For Kenyan banks, this rings true. It has become a sector that acknowledges a crisis, marks it as good and quickly finds ways to pick itself up.

At the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, all sectors of the economy were battered, leading to job cuts in response to flagging earnings.

But the banking sector, which saw its profits dip to an eight-year low in 2020, is already back and surpassed pre-pandemic levels – even as other industries take baby steps on their recovery journey.

Banks’ pretax profits for the full year ended December 2021 grew by 72.7 per cent to a record Sh194.8 billion, taking the earnings past the pre-pandemic levels……Standardmedia

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