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Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za THE residential property is set for another year of robust activity and shifting home-ownership trends following 18 months of unexpected recovery and rebound in the market, BetterBond chief executive Carl Coetzee said yesterday. He said semigration is back in full swing with the Western Cape once again being the go-to destination; especially for middle-class Gautengers looking to relocate. Recent data from Lightstone suggested that 35 percent of people moving provinces were going to the Western Cape, up from the 31 percent in 2020. BetterBond’s application volumes for the 12 months ending November increased 27 percent in terms of applications from the Western Cape. Four percent of semigration buyers were moving to smaller but more expensive properties in the province, Lightstone reported. According to BetterBond’s November applications, the…
Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za SOUTH Africa’s biggest food retailer Shoprite Group has partnered with RTT Group, Checkers’ Sixty60 logistics partner, to create a joint venture company that aims to beef up its e-commerce offering and add to the more than 4 000 jobs already created by Sixty60, its online delivery app. The joint venture partnership between Shoprite and RTT comes as Covid-19 has accelerated online shopping with more people preferring to shop from the comfort of their homes. Shoprite said yesterday it would hold a 50 percent interest for an undisclosed sum in the joint venture and the joint venture protects the learnings, technology and intellectual property created by Checkers Sixty60 to date while facilitating future innovation and development of the group’s last mile logistics. Shoprite Group chief executive Pieter…
Travel bans and fourth wave of infections threaten thousands of livelihoods Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za A FEAR of impending widespread job losses has gripped South Africa’s hospitality industry as the government currently mulls the tightening of lockdown restrictions this festive season, due to rising Covid-19 infections. A study conducted by the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) has shown that emergence of the more transmissible Omicron coronavirus variant has significantly hit business sentiment. The BER yesterday said a snap poll early this month indicated that confidence in the hospitality sector more than halved due to international travel bans and the onset of the Covid-19 fourth wave. Major source markets for foreign tourists to South Africa have implemented travel restrictions, after local scientists successfully sequenced the Omicron variant last month. After the announcement,…
VALUE for money in the global stock market universe is rare, but if you blink you might lose out. Until now, the global equity universe, as measured by the MSCI All-Country World Index (ACWI), a market capitalisation-weighted index that measures the equity performance in both the developed and emerging markets is up by 15.5 percent in terms of the US dollar, since the end of December last year. This year was characterised by divergent stock market performances worldwide, ranging between -22 percent and 35 percent. After being one of the top performers in 2020, China’s stock market was one of the world’s worst performers in 2021, with the MSCI China Index down 19 percent. The MSCI China Index captures large and mid-cap representation across China and covers about…
Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za MEMBERS of the Minerals Council South Africa yesterday committed to ensuring that bonuses for miners did not compromise the right to refuse unsafe work as a they race against time to urgently halt the “unacceptable regression” in fatalities at the country’s mines. Roughly 72 mineworkers had died in work-related incidents on South Africa’s mines this year compared with 52 for the same period last year, marking the second consecutive year of regression in safety. The council said in 2020, the industry recorded 60 fatalities compared with 51 the previous year, which was the industry’s lowest number of fatalities. “We know that 72 is not just a number or a statistic. These are people, families, relatives, friends, and colleagues. The impact of every single fatality is very…
Given Majola given.majola@inl.co.za THE year 2021 could be characterised as one of the rarest, yet possibly most beneficial one for South African farmers, says Agricultural Business Chamber (Agbiz) chief economist, Wandile Sihlobo. He said that the year combined ample crop harvest with higher prices, thus boosting farmers’ incomes. “Ordinarily, a year of large harvest tends to lead to lower commodities prices, and farmers’ profits are squeezed. But for 2020 and 2021, commodity prices have remained elevated in South Africa and globally. “The growing demand for agricultural products, specifically oilseeds in China and India, combined with lower palm oil production in parts of Asia and a poor harvest in South America, were among the key reasons for higher global agricultural commodity prices. “As an integral part of the global agriculture ecosystem,…
