Star 2022-01-14

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za THOUSANDS of cash-strapped subsistence farmers, who were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown restrictions, have been left out in the cold as the government has unexpectedly halted relief funding. The Department of Agriculture yesterday announced that it was temporarily suspending, with immediate effect, the implementation of the Presi- dential Employment Stimulus (PES) vouchers. Department of Agriculture spokesperson Reggie Ngcobo yesterday said the programme had been halted due to complaints received from farmers who felt they were being ripped off by suppliers. “We give farmers the names of supplier shops and a list of items the voucher covers. But sometimes they get to the shops and there is no stock,” Ngcobo said. “But in the main, what we picked up is that these suppliers charged more, a…

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za THE RAND strengthened to a two-month high yesterday amid positive investor sentiment following dovish comments from US Federal Reserve chairperson Jerome Powell. Powell on Wednesday said that it would take a few more meetings for the US central bank to further tighten its monetary policy. This disappointed market speculators who had expected the Fed would return to a more hawkish policy and begin hiking interest rates immediately as inflation in the US rose further to a 40-year high in December. As a result, the dollar lost some ground to other major currencies, including the rand. The rand was trading at R15.27 against the greenback in the early morning trade and by 5pm it was bid at R15.38, its highest since November 15th amid a subdued dollar and…

Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za TONGAAT Hulett management should delay their proposed highly dilutive rights issue as there was more at stake at the group than just solving its over-indebted situation, Harry Smit, from Retail Active Shareholder Holdings, said yesterday. Southern Africa’s biggest sugar producer has proposed a rights issue of up to R4 billion, and shareholders will vote at a general meeting on January 18 to proceed or not with the rights issue. Smit, who last year assembled enough shareholder support to change the board and effect changes at ailing Ascendis Health, said he already had the support of some shareholders, including Artemis Investments, a major shareholder in Tongaat with an 8.3 percent stake. He said the rights issue, the holding of which, and further asset disposals, is a…

Dieketseng Maleke dieketseng.maleke@inl.co.za THARISA Minerals, the platinum group metals (PGM) and chrome co-producer, started the year with a bang as it posted the best-ever quarterly production in South Africa during its first-quarter results, which ended on December 31, 2021. Listed on the JSE and London stock exchanges, Tharisa said PGM production rose 9.2 percent quarter-on-quarter to 47 700 ounces, while chrome production rose 1.5 percent to 401 800 ounces. The average PGM basket price during this period was $2 394 (R36 913) an ounce. The mining firm maintained its production guidance for the year at between 165 000 ounces and 175 000 ounces of PGMs, and between 1.75 million and 1.85 million tons of chrome concentrates. “Covid-19 remains a…

Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za ULTIMATE Sports Nutrition (USN), a fast-growing locally developed global sports nutrition brand, is partnering with investment company Fledge Capital to drive its international expansion. Fledge Capital, previous investors in We Buy Cars and Dis-Chem, has acquired a 25 percent direct shareholding in USN which has turnover approaching R2 billion, a statement said yesterday. Founded by Albé Geldenhuys in 1999, USN is a 100- percent South African business launched from the entrepreneur’s Pretoria home and then outsourced to local pharmaceutical manufacturers in their aim to meet a gap in the market between superior but costly international sports nutrition products and cheaper but inferior local counter- parts, with reasonably priced quality products. Over two decades, USN claims to have become South Africa’s dominant market leader in sports…

THE 2007/8 CRISIS, whose negative persistent effects on output, productivity, employment etc lingered in South Africa until met by the 2020 coronavirus economic crisis, was as much a financial crisis as a crisis of macroeconomics. The crisis not only shook the consensus on macroeconomic policy, but exposed the severe limitations of monetary policy, especially the key tenets of its intellectual foundations. As a consequence, in Europe, Japan, the US and in developing countries like China, Bangladesh, Brazil and many others, the crisis caused swift changes in the operational conduct of macroeconomic policy, especially monetary policy. In South Africa, it was, sadly, business as usual, despite critical plodding from careful economists. It had to take one-and-a-half decades of suffering for the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) to recognise that the conduct…