Skip to main content

South African central Bank raised the rates.

 


South Africa has down­graded its eco­nomic pro­jec­tions fol­low­ing the worst spell of rolling black­outs in the his­tory of the con­tin­ent’s most indus­tri­al­ised nation.

South Africa

The South African Reserve Bank raised its bench­mark rate by a quarter of a per­cent­age point to 7.25 per cent, a smal­ler increase than in pre­vi­ous policy decisions and below the half-point level that most eco­nom­ists expec­ted, warn­ing that the coun­try’s eco­nomy would barely grow this year.

In Novem­ber it had fore­cast a 1.1 per cent expan­sion.

‘The shift in focus towards growth comes at a time that infla­tion pres­sures are start­ing to dis­sip­ate.’

Eskom, the power pool, is to impose 250 days of rolling black­outs this year, up from a pre­vi­ous fore­cast of 100 days.

The power cuts will remove «as much as two per­cent­age points from growth in 2023, com­pared to the pre­vi­ous estim­ate of 0.6 per­cent­age points», it said.

The cent­ral bank also slashed growth fore­casts for 2024 from 1.4 per cent to 0.7 per cent, when it expects about 150 days of power cuts.

Eskom gen­er­ates nearly all of South Africa’s elec­tri­city sup­ply.

Break­downs at age­ing coal power sta­tions, cor­rup­tion and a lack of funds for main­ten­ance have all added to pres­sure on Pres­id­ent Cyril Ram­a­phosa’s gov­ern­ment.

The shift to a slower pace of tight­en­ing comes as the cent­ral bank con­tin­ues to battle above-tar­get infla­tion.

South African infla­tion remains above the mid­point of a tar­get range of 3 to 6 per cent, but the pace of price rises has faded in recent months. The bank said that infla­tion, which ended 2022 at 7.2 per cent, should fall to 5.4 per cent this year.

www.sba.tax

Labels:

Comments

  1. Amalia27 January 2023 at 10:33

    250 days of rolling blackouts!? What is going on in South Africa?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Susan27 January 2023 at 11:43

      Corruption. That's what's going on in SA. This country could be doing so much better if it had a few dozen good men and not the corrupt politicians it does now.

      Delete
    2. Dominic27 January 2023 at 14:24

      And regular people have to suffer because of this widespread corruption. And it's only going to get worse.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Cloud Bookkeeping

HS2 cost cuts new routes and add delays.

 Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have begun work on «Project Sil­ver­light» sug­gest­ing the high­speed rail scheme might face four addi­tional years of delay. The planned High Speed 2 rail line faces fur­ther delays of up to four years and more cuts to the project under plans being drawn up by min­is­ters to rein in its bal­loon­ing costs. The extra delays to the coun­try’s biggest infra­struc­ture project would mean that it would not be com­pleted until as late as 2045 — 12 years after ori­gin­ally planned. «This is a func­tion of infla­tion; we are hav­ing to find huge sav­ings because the cost of everything the depart­ment is already doing will have become so much more expens­ive by then,» said one gov­ern­ment offi­cial. In Octo­ber, the FT repor­ted that the Treas­ury had asked HS2’s man­age­ment team to identify poten­tial cuts or «scope reduc­tions» to the high-speed line. Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have sub­sequently begun work on Project Sil­ver­light aimed at fi...
4 comments
Read more

Small business will be excluded from fraud law.

  Min­is­ters are plan­ning to exclude small busi­nesses from anti-fraud legis­la­tion by nar­row­ing the scope of a crim­inal offence tar­get­ing com­pan­ies that fail to pre­vent eco­nomic crimes. MPs and anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign­ers had hoped the gov­ern­ment would seek to amend the eco­nomic crime and cor­por­ate trans­par­ency bill to ensure the new offence covered all com­pan­ies. The plans to limit the scope of the amend­ments will also dis­ap­point those who had hoped the legis­la­tion would remove key hurdles to the pro­sec­u­tion of white-col­lar crime. A new «fail­ure to pre­vent» offence for fraud would bring it in line with exist­ing sim­ilar cor­por­ate offences for bribery and tax eva­sion. At present, pro­sec­utors need only prove that organ­isa­tions lacked «reas­on­able» or «adequate» con­trols to pur­sue the offence in bribery and tax eva­sion cases. «It would be much more sens­ible for the gov­ern­ment to provide strong guid­ance for SMEs on what these pro­ce...
3 comments
Read more

Doubt on CS's collateral.

  Credit Suisse provided an emergency $140mn loan to Greensill Capital based partly on invoices to companies that deny ever doing the business stated on the documents. The Swiss bank provided the loan in October 2020, less than five months before the collapse of Greensill, a supply chain finance firm that counted former British prime minister David Cameron as a senior adviser. Invoices issued by metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Commodities and sold to Greensill formed part of the collateral for the loan, according to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the transaction. Yet several of the parties named on the invoices have told the FT they did no business with Liberty. GFG has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Credit Suisse’s loan had a clause dictating that the collateral value had to be equal to or greater than the $140mn borrowed. The terms of the debt agreement only allowed invoices on Green-sill’s balance sheet to count towards this tally if t...
2 comments
Read more