Star 2025-01-06

Eskom continues to meet electricity demand and is not likely to implement load shedding, at least until the end of March this year. The utility has reached 282 consecutive days without load shedding since March 26, last year after improving the performance of its Generation units. Investment in a Generation Recovery Plan and better maintenance has also resulted in year-to-date diesel savings of R16.52 billion, it said in a statement on Friday night. In August, Eskom shared its outlook from September 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025, predicting a likely scenario of a load shedding-free summer. “This outlook remains unchanged. Our year-to-date unplanned outages average is 11 906MW, which is 1 094MW less than our 2024 summer base case of 13 000MW,” Eskom said. On December 30, the Generation Recovery…

The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) has urged other development finance institutions to advance infrastructure solutions that integrate climate resilience and sustainable development in Africa and other developing nations. This comes as Africa and Asia bear the brunt of climate impacts like droughts and floods, yet the financial resources required to adapt existing infrastructure are woefully insufficient. These regions are among the hardest hit by climate change. Prolonged droughts, rising sea levels, and devastating floods are wreaking havoc on economies and communities, disrupting livelihoods and threatening food security. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, Africa alone requires up to $100 billion annually by 2030 for climate adaptation, while many Asian nations face similarly staggering funding gaps. DBSA CEO, Boitumelo Mosako, said the absence of a cohesive climate finance…

Economists predict that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for 2025 will be close to 1.6% in 2025, the foundation of which was laid in 2024 with lower inflation and two interest rate cuts. Inflation was below 3% at the end of 2024 and the South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) cut interest rates by 25 basis points in September and November. Rating agency S&P Global have also forecast a positive outlook for South Africa in 2025. Waldo Krugell, an economics professor at North-West University said that he was optimistic about growth prospects in 2025 even though the GDP contraction in the third quarter slightly obscured the forecast a bit. “Overall the current expectation is for growth of 1.5 or 1.6% next year. On the demand side we know some growth will…

Industry warns government to avert the looming shortage of LNG gas in the country South Africa’s looming gas cliff has been brought closer to reality by the electoral conflict impasse in Mozambique, which resulted in “gas-shedding” at the height of the festive season as industrial users warned that the government needed to step up efforts to avert the looming shortage of LNG gas in the country. This comes as petrochemicals giant Sasol confirmed last week to have reduced production of natural gas at its Central Processing Facility (CPF) in Temane, Mozambique. Alex Anderson, Sasol’s senior manager for group media relations and external communication, said the pipeline was not and has never been closed but that under prevailing circumstances in Mozambique, supplies had to be closely monitored. “As a result of…

Nicola Mawson Gold started 2025 with a bang, notching a gain of as much as 1% so far this year, before closing somewhat lower on Friday when compared with the last day of 2024. The precious metal could also break through the $3 000 (R56 136) mark, having closed at $2 638.30 on Friday. “Gold markets have had a very strong 2024 and I think we’re entering a phase where gold very well could start to go sideways for a while,” Christopher Lewis, FXEmpire analyst, said on Friday. “Gold breaking above the $2 800 level would change everything though, and should send it towards the $3 000 level, which I wouldn’t be surprised to see happen sometime during 2025.” The yellow metal has been boosted by expectations of sustained central…

The USMCA is a globally significant trade grouping. Mutual trade among its three members – the US, Mexico, and Canada – was worth around $1.5 trillion in 2023, or about 8% of world imports. As a result, the recent threat by US President-elect Donald Trump to put sweeping 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, could have potentially huge effects both regionally and globally. We consider the implementation of blanket tariffs, particularly on a permanent basis, as a very low probability scenario, compared to the more targeted tariffs we assume in our baseline. But such a scenario is nevertheless worthy of analysis given the scale of the possible effects and the general uncertainty regarding this issue. We have already illustrated some of the possible regional impacts in recent work,…