Star 2023-05-24

TYMEBANK, just more than 8 years old and one of the fastest growing digital bank groups globally, said yesterday it had raised $77.8 million (R1.5 billion) from two new international investors, Norrsken22 and Blue Earth Capital, to fund further expansion. The two new shareholders join Tyme following the Series B capital raise launched in January. Tymebank was the first bank in South Africa to be operated off a cloud-based infrastructure network, and it was the first to be granted a commercial banking licence, co-founder and Tymebank CEO Koen Jonker said in a telephone interview yesterday. The closing of the second capital raise also coincided with the group reaching 7 million customers this month, which, after entering the market as a disruptor, was now entrenched as…

BUSINESS conditions in South Africa continued to deteriorate for the fourth month in a row in March as the global shocks over the US banking systems crisis undermined the US dollar-denominated export commodity price index. According to the SA Reserve Bank (SARB), the composite leading business cycle indicator in South Africa slipped by 2% in March, following a downwardly revised 0.5% fall in December 2022. This was the fourth consecutive period of declines in business indicators, as five out of the seven available component time series decreased. The SARB said the largest negative contributors were the decline in South Africa’s US dollar-denominated export commodity price index and a deceleration in the six-months smoothed growth rate in the real M1 money supply. On the other hand, the positive contributors were…

SOUTH Africa may face unacceptable energy deficits for decades as its long-term plans do not sufficiently address the scale of new baseload capacity nor the transmission infrastructure required. This was according to Coronation Fund Managers’ directors, which said in its results for the six months to March 31 that decisions on these issues needed to be taken now. They said that while the performance of the economy was discouraging, with long-term fundamentals continuing to deteriorate and little concrete action being taken to drive meaningful change, “our biggest immediate concern is the state of electricity generation.” The group manages more than R600 billion in investment assets. Recent regulatory relaxation to allow private sector power generation should reduce the intensity of load shedding in the medium term. However “if these investments…

This would be the 10th consecutive increase since the start of 2022 SOUTH Africans will have to tighten their belts even further as discretionary spending will be affected as interest rates are tipped to reach their highest in 14 years this month. Investors have priced in another 50 basis points hike by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) as the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is set to announce its decision tomorrow. This would be the 10th consecutive increase since the start of 2022, with South Africans seeing the repurchase rate (repo rate) rise from 3.75% at the start of January 2022. This as headline consumer inflation for April is unlikely to fall within the SARB’s target range of 3% to 6% per annum in just one month after it…

IF SOUTH Africa is to add the much-needed 4 gigawatts (GW) to 5GW of new renewable energy generation capacity to the grid each year, solutions and efforts will need to be employed to optimise the existing transmission infrastructure capacity, it will provide an interim short-term solution to allow Eskom more time to implement the Transmission Develop- ment Plan, which has now passed levels of urgency. The employment of multiple solutions and improved energy mechanisms are required if another failed renewable energy independent power producer procurement programme bid window is to be avoided. We have been engaged in efforts to tackle the issues regarding access to the grid and the unlocking of grid capacity since early 2022 while urging key stakeholders to prioritise the transmission build. More than a year later,…

DEVELOPMENTS in Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) technologies are receiving huge investments around the world. South Africa was the world leader until its Pebble Bed Modular Nuclear Reactor (PBMR) technology was lost. Losing this prime position in this technology clearly demonstrates the lack of foresight. Our government decided not to fund its further development and completion. This has resulted in South Africa being relegated to being the global spectator. As a consequence, its engineers and scientists that remained in South Africa have become alienated, and those who left are held in high regard as global leaders in this technology, which they displayed with unparalleled proficiency. But before spending much time soliloquising, I have to answer the question of what SMR is. SMRs are Nuclear Power Reactors that produce electricity of…