Post #164

🇧🇼Shopping Together, African-Style 🇦🇴 Do you and your fellows ever admire something you’d love to buy, but then remember the budget? 🌐 Yesterday Botswana and Angola’s mines ministersmet to discussexactly that kind of purchase: De Beers, a major world-scale diamond producer both countries covet. Its current owner Anglo American PLC has been trying to offload its 85% stake due to plunging diamond prices - and both Angola and Botswana made their bids. The ministers met in Gaborone behind closed doors for about 40 minutes, and nothing important was disclosed to journalists. ⏩For both countries, this purchase is like a Lamborghini for a normal man - both, in fact, do not have enough spare cash to sink into De Beers, and there’s a real question whether they need the company at all.⏪ 🔸Botswana’s budget totals roughly $7 billion, with mineral revenues having been revised sharply down in 2024-2025. De Beers price is put at roughly $5 billion, while some think the fair cost is $3-4 billion. Either way, it is something Botswana can hardly afford. 🔸Luanda’s 2025 budget is roughly $38 billion in 2025. Even so, the finance minister has already said the state budget will not fund the De Beers bid. So any money must come from elsewhere. ⏩ So… where’s the money, Lebowski? 🔸Botswana’s president has signaled he wants outside money. In a late-September interview he said the government was talking to sovereign funds, including a Qatari-linked package and talks with the Omani Investment Authority. 🔸 Angola, for its part, has not disclosed its funding option, but today it hosts India’s president. With India being the world’s cutting and polishing hub, handling roughly 90% of diamonds by volume, this may hint at some investment talks. 🔸 After all, it is possible that at today's meeting the countries discussed a joint buying offer, which would allow them to share the costs. All of this sounds bold, but natural diamonds are a shaky bet while lab-grown diamonds output surges and squeezes prices. For ordinary people, channeling scarce money into growth at home would be far more useful than buying a famous logo. Devils Below