News in South Africa 20th February: 1. Rand weakens: The rand has weakened with the market worried about South Africa’s marked fiscal slippage. In the 2023 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MBTPS), gross debt was projected to peak at 77.7% of GDP in 2025/26, far higher than February 2023’s Budget estimate of 73.6%. Investec Chief Economist […]
News in South Africa 13th February: 1. SA’s biggest risks: The biggest risks to South Africa’s 2024 economic outlook may come from insufficient power supply, strains on debt sustainability and the erosion of state legitimacy ahead of elections, according to Allianz. The global financial services giant estimates that South Africa’s economy will expand by 1.4% […]
News in South Africa 12th December: 1. NHI means more tax and less benefits: The National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill last week got the nod from the National Council of Provinces and has now been plonked in the lap of President Cyril Ramaphosa. Other than expropriation without compensation, few statutory artefacts have elicited such exasperation from those […]
News in South Africa 14th November: 1. SARS needs funds: The South African Revenue Service (SARS) will soon run out of ways to collect more taxes as tax hikes are not an option, and the factors limiting the country’s tax revenue are outside the service’s control. This is feedback from Deloitte Africa’s tax controversy leader, […]
News in South Africa 13th September: 1. Stage 6 load shedding: South African electricity outages remain at record levels despite the state power utility burning through vast quantities of diesel to bolster output. Eskom said Tuesday that Stage 6 power cuts, whereby 6,000 megawatts of capacity is removed from the grid to prevent a total […]
News in South Africa 23rd August: 1. Petrol price spike: Vehicle finance group WesBank says that a weaker rand and rising oil prices are converging to deliver a blow to motorists in September. “As September approaches, the convergence of oil prices and the rand/dollar exchange rate assumes paramount significance in shaping local fuel prices,” the […]
News in South Africa 28th June: 1. Eskom issues new rules for grid access: Eskom is doing away with its “first come, first served” principle for projects applying for grid access. It now wants developers to demonstrate that their projects are shovel-ready and will be able to add generation capacity before making grid allocations. Speaking […]
News in South Africa 9th June: 1. South Africa risks losing R613 billion: South Africa stands to lose as much as $32.4 billion in export revenue, almost a 10th of its gross domestic product, should some of its main trading partners retaliate against its unwillingness to take a stance against Russia’s war in Ukraine. “Together, […]
News in South Africa 7th June: 1. Eskom tames load shedding: Power utility Eskom says that recoveries in generation capacity will allow it to suspend load shedding every day until the evening peak. The group said that load shedding will be suspended between midnight and 16h00 on Tuesday (6 June), followed by stage 3 load […]
News in South Africa 6th June: 1. Supermarkets’ diesel bill nears R3bn: The largest supermarket retailers in South Africa have now spent nearly R3 billion on diesel, to enable them to run generators so they could trade through the near-constant load shedding over the past nine months. The bulk of this expense came in the […]
