Frontier Markets News, January 7th 2023

Heads-up,?New Yorkers! On January 17th we will be holding 2023’s first?frontier and growth markets networking evening?at New York City’s coolest new restaurant:?The Mermaid Oyster Bar, Times Square. If you’d like to come along, let me know ASAP. Capacity is limited, so don’t dither!

Another heads up: We?launched a new podcast?this week. Listen in weekly to hear insights and wisdom from some of the most interesting voices in the frontier and emerging world.?

TL:DR on?this week’s newsletter:?

Africa

Ghana?plans to request debt relief through the G20 common framework for debt treatment; power outages lasting as long as 20 hours continue to plague nations in southern Africa, with?Zambia?and?Zimbabwe?among the worst hit; and?Chad?joins a growing list of African nations claiming coup attempts had been thwarted after its military government claimed it had foiled a ‘destabilization’ plot in early December.

Asia

Myanmar’s?junta said it released over 7,000 prisoners, including an unknown number of political prisoners, in a move it claimed was intended to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the country’s independence from the UK;?Sri Lanka?is set to begin renegotiating trade deals with?China,?India?and?Thailand?as the country seeks more economic partners in the wake of its political and financial crises last year; and?Philippine?President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. said he’d secured Chinese pledges for more than $22 billion in investment for renewable energy projects mineral processing, among other things.

Middle East

Israel?fired missiles?on Syrian capital Damascus’ international airport, the latest of more than 400 airstrikes since 2017 targeting?Iran-linked military assets and that country’s network of allied militias in the region.?

Get the scoop on all these stories and more?in this week’s newsletter

Europe

Hungary is to exempt mothers under 30 from personal income tax for the rest of their lives in a bid to boost sagging fertility numbers that have contributed to labor crises. In 2020, the country's fertility rate fell below the replication rate to 1.6 births per mother from 2.5 in 1975.

Global

Frontier and emerging markets are set for another difficult year, but they could fare better than their developed-market counterparts,?William Jackson, chief emerging markets economist at consultancy Capital Economics,?told FMN?in our podcast, released this week; and the results of El Salvador’s and the Central African Republic’s adoption of bitcoin as a legal currency have been disappointing, to say the least.?