Business

Shanghai, China | AFP | China Construction Bank, one of the country’s “big four” financial institutions, reported a moderate first-half profit rise and improving asset quality as a government crackdown on bad debt kicked in. The bank’s earnings were posted Wednesday night, hours after China’s three other big state-owned lenders announced …

San Francisco, United States | AFP | Ordering pizza from the sofa without lifting a finger has joined the list of modern-day conveniences thanks to a hot trend in voice-commanded smart speakers. Amazon, Apple and Google are duking it out with devices designed to sit out of sight in homes, awaiting …

Kampala, Uganda | JULIUS BUSINGE | Uganda’s annual headline inflation reduced from 5.7% for the year ended July 2017 to 5.2% for the year ending August 2017, representing a 0.5 percentage point drop, Uganda Bureau of Statistics announced on Aug. 31. The statistics body attributed the drop to the decline in …

Kampala, Uganda | COMMENT | UGANDA MEDIA CENTRE |   As Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) strives to improve customer service under the Modernisation Programme, using client centred approaches, there are several fragmented processes handled in different locations. URA incurs a lot of expenses on communication and travel between the various offices to …

Kampala, Uganda | JULIUS BUSINGE | Uganda Breweries Limited (UBL) has asked government to create a fair operating business environment by urgently banning alcohol sold in sachets. Speaking at a media roundtable with business journalists in Kampala on August 30, Mark Ocitti, the managing director of UBL said some unregulated dealers …

Moscow, Russia | AFP | President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman on Wednesday confirmed that the Kremlin last year received an email from a lawyer working for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump about building a Trump Tower skyscraper in Moscow. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that the Trump Organization’s chief counsel at the …

  Washington, United States | AFP | The US economy grew at its fastest pace in more than two years in the second quarter, hitting President Donald Trump’s goal for the first time since he took office, according to data released Wednesday. Higher consumer spending and business investment prompted a sharp …

Paris, France | AFP |  French judges have ended their investigation into the substantial assets of Gabon’s late president Omar Bongo and his family, none of whom have been charged, sources close to the case said Wednesday. French prosecutors have been investigating since 2010 whether the fortunes amassed in France …

Kampala, Uganda | JULIUS BUSINGE | Commercial banks in Uganda are in bad mood after recording bad performance in the first half of 2017. According to industrial data, profits dropped 4% year-on-year as at June 2017 compared to 18% growth in the same period last year. Industry client loans and advances …

Sudhir, BoU fallout: An inside account of the politics behind the tycoon’s troubles Kampala, Uganda | HAGGAI MATSIKO | On July 6, President Yoweri Museveni chaired a meeting at which tycoon Sudhir Ruparelia and officials from Bank of Uganda (BoU) sought to resolve a crisis resulting from the takeover of Crane …