Bullish Thoughts had taken a
break but he is back. He is quite intrigued by the developments that have been
taking place in the local capital markets.
Matonjeni
up in the skies
Bullish Thoughts was in
Victoria Falls for the annual ZAPF Congress. It was quite an interesting
journey. Firstly, Matonjeni was up in the sky as opposed to last year when
Zambezi Airlines was the transporter.
However, the site of
Matonjeni's cockpit screens was sickening to the core. Summarily put, the
cockpit screen looked like that of a "dhobha dhobha", you know
those run down lorries that ferry pit sand, river sand, bricks, etc where the
only roadworth part is the windscreen!
The worst was still to come on
Friday flight to the “smoke that thunders”!
Air Zimbabwe decided to
overbook the trip from Harare. The result was the kind of stuff you see on
Nickelodeon!
Passengers had to seat on each
other lap so that everybody could be accommodated.
Imagine “kugara paKadoma” (squatting)
in an aeroplane!
IATA should just cancel the
safety certificate because having five passengers in a space designed to
accommodate 3 passengers is unheard of!
ZRP
and the abuse of the domestic tourist
After leaving the Victoria
Falls International Airport, the shuttle bus arrived at the police roadblock
just before the bridge outside the Victoria Falls town.
The convoy of 5 or so buses
taking delegates from the airport to town was stopped “because the drivers were
not displaying their driving licences on the windscreen”. Quite weird ain't it.
The buses waited for over an
hour whilst the police were arguing with drivers. Bullish Thoughts is reliably
informed that if the buses were carrying foreign tourists, it would not have
been stopped for such a long time, almost equivalent to the time Matonjeni took
from Harare to Victoria. Eik!
Someone needs to educate the
police on professional contact and adapting to the situation on the ground
because domestic tourists are always a huge chunk of arrivals to all
destinations.
The
Curse of Century Towers
Bullish Thoughts thinks Century
Towers is probably cursed. No offense meant but that's the building where 15
employees died when the elevator crashed. That's the same building which housed
Century Bank. Ever since, any institution that comes into contact with Century
Bank routes has gone under.
Bullish Thoughts will not
belabor the Interfin debate suffice to
say he closed his account way back in February after having been given $500 on
the corporate account. He decided to bank with banks from thereon.
Unfortunately the struggle for
survival is not confined to Interfin Bank alone. Other parts of the "kaconglomerate" are also
disintegrating. ZSE eventually chopped Gulliver off the bourse for failure to
release the results but not before employees had already started picketing for
their salaries.
We can only say "chimwe
chikomba tasa"
One other obvious thing coming
out is that ultimately there is no such as the corporate veil
because money is involved, it gets very personal!
Government the cotton buyer
Bullish Thoughts is beginning
to think that government mandarins now need psychiatric attention. How one can
think that the broke government can suddenly have the money to buy cotton off
farmers when it still hasn't paid for cereal deliveries done to GMB in the past
two years boggles the mind.
Cotton price as at 21 June was
US$0.65 on the international market. The farmers are demanding a minimum price
of US$0.80 for the lowest grade of cotton while cotton merchants want to pay
US$0.30, a development that had resulted in delays in opening the marketing
season which usually starts in April.
Elsewhere in the world,
governments pay farmers a subsidy being the difference between the purchase
price offered by merchants and what the farmers wanted. Merchants will get the
international price.
Forgive the cotton farmers!
They don't give a hoot about world markets. Unfortunately because the agritex
officers are just talk how to inform farmers about killings weeds, rotating
crops but no financial training they never advised farmers to manage their
costs of producing the crop.
.
Hail Masvinu; King of Ugliness
Pretty ugly, ain't it? It’s
quite interesting to note that the Mr Ugly contest has been going on for a
number of of years but they had never encountered a man so ugly that traffic
lights would immediately change to red straight from green!
The man badly however needs to
make money from his new found firm and his dzetse
like face.
Bullish Thoughts is kindly
appealing to Corporate Finance/ Investment Advisors to structure a portfolio
indexed to ugly subject to the constraint that Masvinu will not use facial
creams or otherwise.
Bullish Thoughts thinks that
Masvinu could approach the manufacturers of Chikwapuro, Chirindamatura or Raid Insect killers and he could just
wink at the cockroaches and they will drop dead straight away. The Zora Butter
route might way as strikers may fail to score after seeing the King i the
terracces.
Otherwise, Hail Masvinu; Oh
King of Ugliness!
