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Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za THE COLD WINTER winds blowing in Russia’s direction could spell a potential economic downturn for South Africa as one of its major trading partners has been isolated from global trade. This comes at a time when South Africa needs increased foreign direct investment as its drive to raise more than R1.2 trillion worth of investments over a five-year period currently stands at about R774 billion in three years. The war in Ukraine started taking its toll on the Russian economy yesterday amid the broadening fallout of the EU and the US’s crippling sanctions. G7 nations have agreed to exclude major Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Tele- communication (Swift) system. However, South Africa maintains good trade relations with Russia as both countries…
Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za FINANCE Minister Enoch Godongwana will be heading to the Public Sector Labour Summit later this month emboldened by a landmark Constitutional Court (ConCourt) ruling yesterday, which dismissed an appeal brought by public sector unions after the government reneged on implementing the last leg of its 2018 collective wage agreement. This as Godongwana needs to arrest the escalating public sector wage bill. The summit, from March 28 to 31, will present Godongwana and labour stakeholders with an important opportunity to engage in building a sustainable public service and remuneration guidelines for the government’s 1.3 million workers. The ConCourt upheld an earlier Labour Court ruling that the Cabinet’s decision to funnel an additional R37.8 billion to public servants wages had violated clauses 78 and 79 of the 2016…
Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za THE BIDVEST Group, having recently built one of the biggest LPG (liquid petroleum gas) facilities in the world at Richards Bay, is to spend another R500 million to establish an inland LPG terminal in Isando, Ekurhuleni, chief executive Mpumi Madisa said. “This is twice the size of our original ambitions, and we anticipate commissioning towards the end of 2025,” she said in a phoneinterview at the release of the group’s results for the six months to December 31, 2021, yesterday. Madisa said the decision to build the Richards Bay facility was at a time of a shortage of LPG gas in SA, and even then the facility was not big enough. The group now expected demand for its LPG facilities to also increase with the closure…
Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za CONSUMERS are facing tough financial pressures, a situation likely to persist in coming months due to rising prices such as for food, fuel and other commodities, RCL Foods chief executive Paul Cruickshank said yesterday. RCL Foods, which produces more than 30 leading local brands such as Rainbow chicken, Selati sugar, Supreme flour, Sunbake bread, Ouma rusks, and Number 1 mageu, experienced volume declines in its products in the last three months of its interim period to December 31, Cruickshank said in an interview yesterday. He attributed this to rising inflationary pressures on consumers and businesses, and said he expected these would continue into the second half. For instance, rising costs at RCL included for fuel, high international maize prices (maize is used by the group for…
DESPITE South Africa’s economic challenges, the fact that it has a large and young population, that was all about digitisation and smartphones, made it a rapidly rising market, according to customer relationship management service provider Salesforce. Salesforce recently announced it was pushing forward with expansion plans in South Africa by establishing its first legal entity in the country. Additionally, the company announced the appointment of its first two South African leaders Zuko Mdwaba as head of sales and Linda Saunders as head of solution engineering. Robin Fisher, the firm’s senior area vice president, said in an interview with Business Report, emerging markets were their fastest-growing market. “And, as a result of the pandemic and remote employment, we've seen a boom in demand for digital services in South Africa and other…
The term Web3 has suddenly become popular and is often referred to in the literature. But what is Web3 and what does it entail? To properly understand Web3, it is important to know what the preceding Web1 and Web2 entailed. Web1 refers roughly to the initial period from 1991 to 2004, and consisted of a collection of links and home pages. Websites were very static, read-only and had little or no interactivity. Users were mere consumers of content. Web2 was a major improvement and has often been referred to as the “read/write” version of the internet, based on the idea of “the web as platform”, where users not only consume content, but can interact with the content or produce their own content and publish it on blogs, wikis, internet forums…
