Pretoria News 2022-06-15

Standard Bank drives regional enterprise development STANDARD Bank’s Business & Commercial Clients (BCC) division is dedicated to leveraging the power of small, medium, and large enterprises to expand inclusive domestic business growth across Africa. Gaborone-based BCC Southern Africa Head, Leina Gabaraane, believes Africa is entering an exciting expansion phase, characterised by rapid private business formation and growth. As such, Standard Bank is deliberately focused on partnering with businesses to build a capability ecosystem that will support small traders, agribusinesses, and entrepreneurs to grow. Africa’s relatively small market of large cross-border businesses, established corporates, and global multinationals operating across the region are already well catered for. The continent’s much more numerous, smaller businesses on the other hand are generally poorly served or misunderstood by the continent’s financial services sector, despite their…

SOUTH Africa’s level of indebtedness will not be easing as the country continues taking loans from international markets to respond to the Covid-19 pan- demic. The World Bank Group yesterday approved a “low-interest” $480 million (R7.6 billion) loan for South Africa’s Covid-19 Emergency Response Project. This is a second loan in six months, after the World Bank approved South Africa’s request for a R11.4bn economic recovery loan in January, at the height of the Covid-19 fourth wave. The R7.6bn loan comes following a request by the South African government for assistance in financing vaccine procurement. Specifically, this loan will retroactively finance the procurement of 47 million Covid-19 vaccine doses by the government. The World Bank said the loan complemented support by the International Monetary Fund, the African…

The company is delaying until next year what would likely have been the biggest new listing on the JSE in 2022 THE COCA-COLA Company is delaying what would likely have been the biggest new listing on the JSE this year, that of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA), until next year. The Coca-Cola Company first announced in April last year that it planned to sell a portion of its shareholding in CCBA via an initial public offering (IPO), with listings on the JSE and Amsterdam. The decision to delay the listing comes at a time of falling global equity investor sentiment as low global growth, rising interest rates, increasing inflation and geopolitical uncertainty from the conflict in Ukraine and Covid-19 lockdowns in China are driving down global equity prices. According to Bloomberg,…

TELKOM’S share price took an almost 9 percent dip yesterday on the JSE following the release of its annual financial results, posting a decline in revenue and profit due to global supply chain challenges and chip shortages. In late afternoon trade the share was down 8.75 percent to R36.71, the share being down 14.4 percent over 12 months. In an interview, Telkom chief executive Serame Taukobong said the results reflected the challenging market conditions the company was facing. The mobile operator for the year ended March 2022 recorded revenue of R42.76 billion, 1.1 percent lower than the previous year. Profit also decreased from R2.6bn to R2.4bn. However headline earnings per share increased by 2.5 percent. Earnings before interest, tax, and amortisation (Ebitda) were…

EUROPEAN Union (EU) investors in South Africa are thinking twice about their decisions for future investment in the country owing to the July civil unrest that cost the economy over R50 billion and thousands of jobs. These were the results of a survey of 82 European companies operating in South Africa conducted by the EU Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Southern Africa between November 2021 and March 2022. The chamber said yesterday that EU companies operating in South Africa found a strongly negative perception of the current investment climate, with last year’s unrest being considered much more detrimental to investor confidence than Covid-19. It said the ability of the government to deliver efficient services, address corruption, and resolve the ongoing electricity shortfall were also seen as particularly problematic.…

BUSINESSES needed to prepare for a rise in social unrest incidents as the cost-of-living crisis followed hard on the heels of the Covid pandemic, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) yesterday warned. While South Africa is not among the 37 countries with high projected levels of unrest in the next six months, it was among several major markets that sit just outside the “perfect storm”category, the insurer said. Several major markets, including India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Indonesia and Turkey, sit just outside this category. While the risks for South Africa were slightly less acute, they would remain significantly elevated. According to the Verisk Civil Unrest Index Projections, 75 countries would likely see an increase in protests by later this year, resulting in, for example, a higher frequency of unrest…