Star 2022-12-05

SOUTH African consumers will have “The Grinch” stealing their Christmas this year as the price of petrol is set to increase again on Wednesday, taking the little left from household incomes following a rise in the cost of borrowing. According to recent studies, anxiety is on the rise among South African consumers as the high cost of living bites, driven by persistently rising interest rates imposed to curb runaway inflation. Data from the Central Energy Fund (CEF) last week showed that the price of 93 and 95 octane petrol is expected to increase by 30 cents per litre and 41c litre, respectively, following a 51c per litre hike in November. However, diesel is set to fall by R1.48 per litre, offsetting the R1.44 per litre increase last month. This…

He is seen as an economical linchpin for South Africa’s previous investments THE ECONOMIC fallout caused by uncertainty around President Cyril Ramaphosa’s political future could shave off at least 1 percentage point in South Africa’s 2023 growth forecast due to the body blows on investor confidence. This is a view of at least one economist who has warned that the political economy around Phala-Phala farmgate was still likely, in one way or another, to spill over into next year. Investors are still digesting the news that Ramaphosa could be considering his resignation as the country’s president following a damning report that he may have violated his oath of office over his handling of a burglary in his Phala-Phala farm. North West University’s Business School economist Professor Raymond Parsons on…

A KEENLY-awaited listing – that of iconic South African food and consumer group producer Premier Groups – has been cancelled due to the volatile capital markets that were spooked about the uncertainty surrounding the future of President Cyril Ramaphosa. The share price of Premier’s parent company, the Luxembourg and JSE-listed investment group Brait, plunged 7.42% on Friday to close at R3.87 once the market had digested the news of the cancelled plans to list. On November 22 this year, Premier had published a pre-listing statement detailing a private placement of up to 65.03 million ordinary shares and the subsequent admission to listing Premier on the Main Board of the JSE on December 8, 2022. “Premier received a significant amount of investor interest and support for the business; however, the…

POWER outages of up to 19 hours a day, dark industrial parks and streets in the capital Harare as well as rising production costs – owing to additional costs running diesel generators – that are likely to drive inflation are the hallmarks of Zimbabwe’s newest electricity crisis. Worsened by limited production of electricity from the Kariba hydro-power plant as a result of plunging water levels, Zimbabwe is suffering acute power shortages. Imports from South Africa have been problematic as Eskom battles its own power supply crunch mainly as a result of frequent breakdowns to its generating units. “We cannot sustain to operate everyday using the generator. Human resources is having to reconfigure shifts so that some groups can work with extra capacity during the nights when we have a few…

THE RICHEST man in the world has delivered on his promise to enable free speech on Twitter. Elon unleashed a bombshell over the weekend with the release of the Twitter files. Essentially, the files are communications within Twitter (before Elon’s time) that show how the social media platform influenced the US elections. One of the major highlights from the files reveal how Twitter tried to hide embarrassing information about the US President’s son, Hunter Biden. The files also show how the US mainstream media colluded with Twitter to control the narrative during the US election period. On the other hand, the files also show the kind of environment Elon Musk walked into when he bought Twitter. Chances are he did not know the kind of operations that took place in…

SOUTH Africa’s largest asset manager, the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), has invested over R1.6 trillion on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). In 2022, nearly 30 years after democracy opened the country to business, less than 1% of this magnificent sum (it’s a lot of zeroes), has been invested in black-owned companies. It’s not because there are not enough black-owned or managed organisations out there though, to my mind, it’s because the more things change, the more they stay the same. The outcry over the PIC’s investment into Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital (ARC) and Ayo Technology Solutions (AYO) is a case in point. Especially that of AYO, of whom reams of articles have been written, in what appears to be a deliberate attempt by the “establishment” media to undermine the…