OAO Gazprom, Russia’s state- sponsored gas monopoly, is offering to buy all of Libya’s oil and gas exports in a bid to increase its dominance over Europe’s gas market and enhance Russia’s political clout throughout the region.

Alexei Miller, Gazprom’s chief executive, made the offer on July 9th at a meeting with Libya’s head of state, Muammer Gaddafi.

“Libya positively evaluated Gazprom’s proposition to buy all future volumes of gas, oil, and [liquefied natural gas] designed for export at market price,” Gazprom said in a statement after the meeting. Read the rest of this entry »

According to a report on Fin24 yesterday; The manufacturer of Zimbabwe’s banknote paper will not supply any more notes to the country. This comes off the bank of pressure from the international community to force a change in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s bank note paper was supplied by a German company called Giesecke & Devrient GmbH. The German government has asked the paper manufacturer to stop supplying Zimbabwe with the paper as a way of imposing sanctions on the country. This move will surely add more pressure on the Zimbabwe government as there will be no form of cash in the country. There is already a serious cash crisis in Zimbabwe and this move by the Germans will not ease the crisis in any way. The Zimbabwe government will have to look for another paper supplier and do it quickly as the German company has stop supplying with immediate effect.

The opposition party leader in Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, of the MDC, pulled out of the presidential runoff vote which was set to take place on Friday this week. He pulled out because he saw there was no way he could win under the current crisis being faced in Zimbabwe and, the longer he tried to campaign to win, the more lives were going to be lost. Now that Tsvangirai has pulled out of the race, many people are now asking, “What next?” It is really anyones guess right now, anything can happen within the next few days and weeks, but one thing for sure that will certainly happen soon is the collapse of the Zimbabwe economy. Read the rest of this entry »

Images like this seen on the left are being beamed across the world showing how bad the situation in Zimbabwe is. The local currency in Zimbabwe has become virtually worthless. The central bank in Zimbabwe continues to print more money and thus continuing to fuel inflation. It got to a stage where they deleted three zeros from the currency but that does not seem to have helped as the zeros continue to pile up. It is said that one US dollar will get you one billion Zimbabwe dollars. Now if you look at the image, there are a lot of $200 000 Zimbabwe dollar notes. In real terms, that one $200 000 note is only worth $0.0002 US dollars! No wonder it is being thrown in the bin. Read the rest of this entry »