Cape Times 2021-06-28

EDWARD WEST edward.west@inl.co.za South Africa may be far away from reaching gender and race-based employment equity, but professional African females are making headway, according to the Commission for Employment Equity’s 21st annual report released Friday. The commission said in its 21st annual report that 24 percent of the professionally skilled positions in South Africa were occupied by African females in 2020, followed by 22.7 percent African males, 18.2 percent white males and 14 percent white females. Commission for Employment Equity chairperson Tabea Kabinda said in the report, however, that in line with previous reports, the pace of transformation overall continues to be too slow in the work place. She said the dominance of whites and Indians at top and senior management, while remaining under-represented at the semi-skilled…

Sandile Mchunu sandile.mchunu@inl.co.za STEINHOFF International produced a resilient performance in the six months to the end of March, despite operating in an environment dominated by the Covid-19 outbreak, but said on Friday that if a litigation settlement proposal process failed, the company would collapse by the end of the year. Steinhoff owns retail businesses, such as Pepkor Holdings, Pepco Group, Mattress Firm and Greenlit Brands Group. The troubled retailer, still reeling from the December 2017 accounting scandal which led to more than 95 percent decline in its share price, slashed its half-year loss to €359 million (R6.03bn), down from €1.52 billion, compared to last year. In the interim report, the management assessed if the company could continue as a going concern while it rides out the fallout…

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za Covid-19 has dealt yet another major blow to South Africa’s growth prospects for 2021 as the third wave of infections continued to worsen amid a worryingly slow vaccine roll-out. President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday ramped up the country’s lockdown to Alert Level 4 for 14 days. Ramaphosa imposed a two-week total ban on the sale of alcohol, both for home and on-site consumption, with all non-essential establishments having to close by 8pm. Restaurants and other eateries will be permitted to sell food only for take-away or delivery. Ramaphosa said that because of the burden of infections in Gauteng, travel in and out of the province for leisure purposes will be prohibited. Gauteng now accounts for more than 60 percent of new cases in the country. Ramaphosa said because…

Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za JUNIOR coal producer Wescoal generated 322 percent more cash from its operations during the year ended March 2021 compared to a year earlier. This despite the slump in Eskom offtake due to the Covid-19 pandemic and logistical problems at the Kusile power station. Wescoal said on Friday that cash generated from operations increased to R773 million compared with R183m in 2020 despite the subdued economic slowdown. Wescoal also narrowed to R36m during the year ended March 2021 compared with a R136m loss a year earlier, and said sales had increased to R2.15 billion from R1.67bn in the prior year. This was mainly due to the full year sales to Eskom, in terms of the Moabsvelden sales agreement. Wescoal’s flagship Moabsvelden project made its…

Tencent is and was a massive success story for Naspers. Tencent’s share price in Chinese renminbi (or yuan) grew by about 29 percent a year over the past 11 years. Naspers boosted the value of savings of many citizens and especially that of government employees through the Government Employees Pension Fund (Gepf) and ensured healthy growth in pensions. At the end of the 2019/20 fiscal year, more than 15 percent of the Gepf’s total investments consisted of Naspers and its subsidiary, Prosus. The outlook for Tencent and Naspers is blurred, though. Naspers’s effective holding in Tencent Holdings is about 22 percent through Prosus. At Friday’s closing price of 598.5 Hong Kong dollars and an exchange rate of R1.82 to the Hong Kong dollar, Naspers’s holding in Tencent…

Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za THE Government should release a further 10 percent stake of its SA Airways (SAA) holding to the public as an empowerment and accountability effort to be credible about the turnaround strategy in which it has given 51 percent to the Tsakato Consortium, analysts suggested. They said the public needed to have a direct stake in the national carrier to drive the transformation the state has embarked on and also ensure that there was minimal corruption in the airline, which has to date sucked over R50 billion in interventions. This after Minister for Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan earlier this month announced that the state was ceding a majority stake in the airline to private investors Tsakato, who currently own the Lanseria Airport in the north…