Cape Times 2021-11-02

Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za THE STATE logistics utility Transnet has had to scale up investment in its security systems, including the use of drones and additional boots on the ground to counter the escalating theft of fuel from pipelines, which have also brought the additional cost of environmental resuscitation of the areas of spillage after leakages seeped into the ground. At the group’s financial results presentation for March 2021 on Friday, chief executive Portia Derby said the theft of fuel, copper and coal had a telling effect on group finances, particularly as it felt compelled to mitigate the environmental impact of fuel seeping into the ground after thieves had left the pipes leaking. This is an issue likely to escalate with the impending rise of fuel later this month after the…

Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za CASHBUILD, the southern African- based retailer of building materials and products directly to the public, plans to continue pursuing growth opportunities following the canning of its R1 billion acquisition of Pepkor subsidiary The Building Company (TBC). Cashbuild said it was disheartened following the Competition Commission’s decision to block its TBC acquisition, according to the group’s annual report released on Friday. “We are disappointed with the termination of the acquisition of TBC as we firmly believe that this transaction would have aligned with Cashbuild’s vision of being the preferred supplier of building material and associated products and services across all market segments,” chief executive Werner de Jager said. The commission prohibited Cashbuild’s R1.075bn acquisition of TBC in May, citing that the proposed merger would create the single…

Reuters, Xinhua and Sputnik AS US TREASURY Secretary Janet Yellen said the Group of 20 rich nations was just “a few billion dollars short” of a pledge to raise $100 billion (R1.5 tril- liion) a year to help developing nations tackle climate change and was working hard to close the gap, China’s President Xi Jinping yesterday called on all parties to take stronger action to jointly tackle the issue. Yellen said the target number was a five-year average, and G20 members remained “very strongly committed” to the goal. “We’re very close to it this year. I think we’re only a few billion dollars short this year, and actually working hard, even now, to try to close the gap,” Yellen told reporters after a meeting with Irish Finance…

A 300 000-YEAR-OLD story is told that throughout the many episodes of the ice age and its warm interludes, humans eked it out on a fossil fuel chance discovery, and somehow clawed their way out of the cave straight into the Stone Age. From that time hitherto, the criticality of greenhouse gases has always underwritten the narrative of the human project. To an appreciable degree, the notoriety of these fossil fuels and their resulting anthropogenic gases, especially carbon dioxide, has received a fair amount of publicity. These include the scale and extent of their coverage in the biosphere and their cost to human, animal and plant life. And so in this age, we find ourselves faced with the prospect of a severe global warming accounting wholly to our conduct.…

THE RECENT debates emanating from what approaches of social assistance and relief in the context of Covid-19 and even prior to it, have pitted civil society with the National Treasury. But now the Treasury has proposed a family grant and civil society is livid and will have none of it, on three grounds at least. First, they say the Treasury has secretly and privately concocted this decision without any consultation. Second, the Treasury sought to ambush the public with a policy that is woefully deficient and can only exclude the South African poor. Third, it is a policy that has no conscience of the environment on which it is implemented, hence the notion of ecological fallacy. It is this last point I will elaborate on. The social justice chair, headed…

Philippa Larkin philippa.larkin@inl.co.za LONDON-listed Grit Real Estate Income Group is taking steps to manage down its loan-to-value (LTV), which rose in the year ended June, said on Friday the potential sale of AnfaPlace Mall in Casablanca, Morocco, would contribute to this end. Grit is a pan-African real estate company that invests in and manages a portfolio of assets in carefully selected African countries. The company, which delisted from the JSE this year, but remains listed in Mauritius and in London, said its distributable earnings per share plummeted 37.7 percent to $5.97 (R90.75) per share from $9.58 per share the prior year. Group LTV increased to 53.1 percent from 50.2 percent in 2020 predominantly as a result of the decrease in the value of the group’s property portfolio,…