| Editorial: Wonky Figures |
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| Monday, 18 January 2010 | |
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It's not really a pleasant symmetry, the way the 2007 GDP growth figure of 7.1% flipped around for a sad-looking 1.7% in 2008. The same day the Economic Survey 2009 was launched, Safaricom released their financial results for the year ending in March 2009. The company posted a 20% decline in profits, but when you consider how much Safaricom is tied into Kenya 's economy, their financial results were looking very decent indeed. Michael Joseph couldn't quite refrain from a few snarky comments about the competition's costly efforts to nibble away at Safaricom's market share with unsustainably low tariffs. I was amused to see new Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta at the press conference, assuming that he might want to stay away from numbers-related events for a bit. But I guess he has little choice, and presumably the combined dividend and tax payment that the Treasury stands to receive were also a good enough reason to hop over to the Stanley . In any case, the event was really really early in the morning, so he had sufficient time to get back to his minions' number crunching. The good people from Mars Group seem to suggest that all those zeros need to be rearranged yet again. This whole kindergarten-level typo story has me in such baffled, wide-eyed wonderment – it is 2009, right, and this is the financial management for a whole country, not some shack in the back of beyond, right? Can we get serious? The only thing more bewildering is that Citizen's new XYZ Show doesn't appear able to turn such pure and abundant satire gold into a kicking show. Also on talking about figures and their stories, we spent a lot of time with Rob Stangroom taking a long, hard look at investor relations management in Kenya and the rest of East Africa . How do listed companies communicate with their investors? Too little, too late, finds Rob – and as a consequence, the discussion is taken over by bloggers, stock market websites and others, so that companies miss a sound opportunity to engage with their current and future owners. The analysis is in three parts: Practices, Dealing with the Public, and Perspectives, so watch out for those articles. 26 May 2009 Comments (0)
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