Star 2023-11-08

INTERNATIONAL companies are finding South Africa competitive for Global Business Services (GBS), Ebrahim Patel, the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, said in Cape Town yesterday. South Africa has positioned itself at the centre of the global consolidated enterprise end-to-end business services owing to its fully developed telecoms ecosystem, top-notch customer service and price competitiveness compared to Asian competitors. Patel commented during the ongoing Business Process Enabling South Africa GBS Conference that a large European company was considering locating to South Africa this year. “In September this year, I met with a large company in Europe that is considering locating to South Africa,” Patel said. This would add to other global car and manufacturing companies that had digital hubs in South Africa. The government was providing incentives and…

Uber yesterday commemorated its 10-year anniversary in South Africa, announcing the launch of e-Packaging UBER was confident that South Africa would come on board with an electric vehicles (EV) policy. It was a question of when, Kagiso Khaole, the general manager of Uber sub-Saharan Africa, said yesterday as he announced the ride-hailing platform had a global target of becoming a zero-emission platform by 2040. Khaole was speaking as Uber yesterday commemorated its 10-year anniversary in South Africa as the group announced the launch of its first electric mobility product, e-Packaging. This has big implications for thousands of South Africa Uber drivers who by that time will have to ditch fossil fuel run cars and move to EVs. In an interview, Khaole said to make this happen in South Africa a…

THE RAND softened yesterday as the recent risk optimism was tempered somewhat by weaker Chinese trade data and a bounce in the US dollar. The local currency eased by 0.2% to R18.41 by 5pm against the US dollar, from the previous close of R18.29/$1 on Monday. Markets were digesting data showing Chinese exports fell more than expected in October, clouding the demand outlook in the world’s top crude importer. Moreover, oil prices came under pressure recently, losing nearly 6% last week, amid growing optimism that the Israel-Hamas war could be prevented from spreading through the Middle East and disrupt oil supply from the region. The price of Brent Crude fell to a 10-week low of $78 per barrel yesterday after rising slightly on Monday as top crude producers Saudi Arabia…

NAMIBIA began construction on Monday of Africa’s first decarbonised iron plant to be powered exclusively by green hydrogen, the country’s investment promotion body said. Steelmaking is one of the most polluting industries in the world and the industry is seeking to shift away from coal-fired plants towards the use of decarbonised iron. The Oshivela project in western Namibia is backed by the German federal government, which has injected €13 million (R255bn), and would use renewable energy to generate 15 000 tons of iron per year with no carbon emissions, the Namibia Investment Promotion and Development Board said in a statement. Namibia last year became the first African country to sign an agreement with the EU to supply the bloc with green hydrogen and minerals needed for clean…

FITCH Ratings agency has warned that South Africa’s recent financial projections tabled during last week’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) could fail to materialise as a result of very high and continuously increasing public-sector wage bill, especially from pressure against consolidation in an election year. The ratings agency yesterday issued its response to the MTBPS tabled by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana which projected that the government’s debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) will rise higher to 77.7% in the fiscal year ending March 2026. Fitch’s associate director for sover- eigns, Thomas Garreau, said this was broadly in line with their own projections. However, Garreau said there was a significant risk that the government could fail to meet its ambitious fiscal targets as wage cost control is set to be particularly challenging. The…

MTN GROUP, the mobile operator with 290 million subscribers in 19 markets, lifted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) by 11.2% in the nine months to September 30. The pan-African group said in a quarterly update that the Ebitda margin, however, was 43.2% year-to-date slightly lower than 44.2% at the same time last year, impacted by upward costs due to inflation and forex depreciation, network resilience costs in MTN SA, and the impact from the conflict in Sudan. These factors were partially mitigated by an expense programme that saw “sustainable cost savings of R1.5 billion and saw the group reach its target for 2023. MTN’s share price closed 1.54% lower at R95.50 on the JSE yesterday, in line with the decline by 2.1% of the JSE…