Star 2025-01-13

South African poultry producers are pushing for stricter protectionist measures, but there are concerns over the long-term impact on consumers, and the focus should rather be to grow exports, said Hume International managing director Fed Hume. Local lobbyists have called for harsher anti-dumping duties to protect domestic poultry producers. Some have further argued that the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) should not renew poultry import quotas from the US under AGOA, (African Growth and Opportunity Act) claiming these quotas disadvantage domestic producers by increasing competition and lowering market prices. The local poultry industry also late last year applied for chicken products to be VAT-free, arguing that it will improve citizens’ access to meat. Hume, who is the MD of a company that has been an importer of frozen…

Participants in the Pre-Assembly Day of the Fifteenth session of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Assembly in Abu Dhabi on the session on “SDG 7 on Sustainable Energy: The Road Ahead” at the weekend said governments and development finance institutions (DFI) needed to “walk the talk” and turn commitments into action. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) were formulated in 2015 and SDG 7 aims at ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy such as electricity, which is a key to the development of agriculture, business, communications, education, healthcare and transportation. The SDG 7 session included stakeholders from the private and public sectors, as well as energy providers to discuss ways to accelerate progress on SDG 7 and to shape a pathway to a collaborative and…

The US dollar gained at the start of 2025, on positive sentiment of the incoming Trump presidency The rand plunged to its lowest in nine months on Friday, breaching the R19-mark to the US dollar as the greenback continued to strengthen on the back of strong US jobs growth. The domestic currency has remained under pressure as US dollar strength persists as it ended 2024 at R18.85/$1, down by 3% for the year, hovering between R18.75 and R18.95/$1 in the first days of 2025. The US dollar also made further gains at the start of 2025 due to continued positive sentiment towards the incoming Trump presidency while emerging market currencies generally have fallen further since the start of the year. The rand weakened sharply by 2.1% to R19.10…

The Los Angeles wildfires damage is already set to cost $50 billion (R955bn). Experts have said that there will be an economic impact, but at the moment, it is difficult to predict the full impact. It was previously reported on IOL that raging wildfires in Los Angeles killed at least two people, destroyed hundreds of buildings, and stretched firefighting resources and water supplies since they began on Tuesday, with fierce winds hindering firefighting operations and fuelling the fires. AccuWeather, which estimates the loss between $52bn and $57bn, added that if the fire spread to densely populated neighbourhoods, the current estimates for loss would have to be revised upward. "Should a large number of additional structures be burned in the coming days, it may become the worst wildfire in modern California…

Trade union Solidarity has again slammed the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme, this time hitting out at the government’s advertising of the health plan on billboards, arguing it’s still unaffordable. According to its calculations, the average personal income tax will have to increase by R37 000 per year. This, said Theuns du Buisson, economic researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI), is “not only outrageous. It is impossible”. Solidarity’s figures estimate that the scheme will cost between R660 billion and R1 300bn. “The government is marketing a pipe-dream, while unemployed doctors in the Eastern Cape are protesting, or while hospitals such as Groote Schuur in the Western Cape can now accommodate only a quarter of the number of internships it had available for training three years ago,” Du Buisson said.…

Consumers will hope for some much-needed reprieve from their monthly budgets at the end of this month when the South African Reserve Bank Governor, Lesetja Kganyago, announces the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) decision on interest rates for the country. The governor is expected to announce if there will be any change to interest rates in the country on 30 January. The start of the year saw consumers finances impacted by fuel price increases for the first month of the year, which came into effect on 1 January. The fuel price increases saw a litre of petrol costing between 12 and 13 cents more. The increases in fuel for January is listed below: n Petrol 93 ULP & LRP: 19.00 cents per litre increase n Petrol 95 ULP & LRP: 12.00…