Pretoria News 2022-07-05

THE SA BUSINESS sector has called for an urgent solution to the country’s electricity crisis, including accelerating the unbundling process and investment in the transmission grid, as crippling power cuts weigh in on activity. Eskom yesterday continued to implement stage 6 rotational loadshedding in the absence of the full plant maintenance staff complement, as wage negotiations resume today. Energy expert Professor Anton Eberhard, speaking on behalf of the National Business Initiative (NBI), said South Africa’s national grid was designed chiefly to take power from Eskom’s coal power stations, but now it needed to be reconfigured to connect renewable energy. Eberhard said investing in the transmission grid would help to stabilise the power supply and meet the growing electricity demands in South Africa. “A business case can be made for a…

The SOUTH African stock market saw its biggest monthly fall in June since the start of the pandemic in March, 2020, as the FTSE/JSE Capped SWIX benchmark followed global markets sharply lower. The index was -7.5 percent down month-on-month in June. The local bourse was holding up relatively well in the year-to-date, with strong commodity markets supporting the country’s terms of trade and low domestic equity valuations attracting flows as investors switched out of relatively expensive growth shares, Anchor Capital’s Peter Little said yesterday. However, the prospects of accelerated global monetary tightening started to increase the possibility of a slowdown in global economic growth, and there were few places for investors to hide in June – the local bourse was not one of them, said Little. Old Mutual Wealth…

IT DOES NOT rain for South African motorists and consumers, it pours. This follows a record high fuel price increase of more than R2 a litre for July, which sees the price of petrol breaching R25 a litre for the first time ever from tomorrow. The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy yesterday delivered the blow and announced the price of petrol for both 93 and 95 octane will increase by a massive R2.37 and R2.57 a litre from midnight, respectively. This means the price for 93 octane will rise from R23.93 to R26.31 a litre, while 95 octane will surge from R24.17 to R26.74 a litre. This is nearly R10 a litre more than a year ago. Diesel will increase by between R2.30 and R2.31 a litre to an…

FINMEUP’S vision is to clear a way for financial freedom for Africa, and many people are taking up the challenge of being in control of their own financial futures on the platform, according to its founder and chief executive, Higgo van Biljon. Van Biljon, 23, said the idea behind FinMeUp started in 2019 when he saw the benefits that had accrued to his friends, who, through a group on WhatsApp, were exchanging investment and financial education information with each other. Entrepreneurship and his love of education and investing – his father steered him into the investment world at age 13, when the boy asked to buy a gold token so it would be worth more money in 10 years – brought it all together in the formation of FinMeUp. “I…

Larkin: What is the basis of your research? Miller: AmaranthCX maintains a database of all South African (SA) – company listings and delistings going back to 1995 – across all SA’s stock exchanges. SA is currently amid a seven- year losing streak averaging about 25 company delistings a year. Having started off 2022 with 332 listed companies, the year is looking especially bad with 18 companies having already delisted, and at least another 14 delisting processes already under way. Add to this the 16 or so distressed companies that are suspended from trading and which are almost certain to delist at some point, and the accelerating impact of the delistings crisis can be seen. This means that more than one in 10 listed companies can be anticipated to delist in…

THE DEPARTMENT of Public Enterprises (DPE) yesterday came out swinging to dispel irregularities in the Takatso Consortium deal at South African Airways (SAA) and threatened to take legal action on “leakage of official information and the peddling of false and distorted information about this process”. In a statement yesterday, the DPE slammed the “deliberate misinformation” that was being spread about the transaction and processes of acquiring the Strategic Equity Partner (SEP) for SAA, saying this distortion of facts negatively impacted and compromised the process. “Members of the public and all interested parties in the process need to be treated with respect and be given accurate information,” it said. The DPE detailed its appointment of Rand Merchant Bank as a transaction adviser to select a SEP for SAA through lengthy timelines,…