Cape Times 2022-01-24

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za IN SPITE of stronger-than-expected recovery, the global economic damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in the past two years has been significant, and further widened the gap between the rich and the poor. This was the view of many expert speakers at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Davos Agenda 2022 virtual meeting, that concluded on Friday. Speakers at the WEF virtual gathering last week highlighted that the pandemic had reversed gains in poverty reduction, hit incomes, and seen global economic slump. However, they remained bullish about the recovery largely due to rapid vaccine deployment in the developed countries, though concerns remained about poor countries still lagging behind. President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, said the global economy was experiencing a “super-strong recovery” that had outpaced…

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za FEARS of a debt trap loomed large last week as it became apparent the government was set to extend the R350 a month Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant for another year. The World Bank on Friday approved R11.4 billion low-interest development policy loan to South Africa to help the government widen its social protection net. National Treasury director-general Dondo Mogajane said the loan would contribute towards addressing the financing gap stemming from additional spending. “It will assist in addressing the immediate challenge of financing critical health and social safety-net programmes, while also continuing to develop our economic reform agenda to build back better,” Mogajane said. President Cyril Ramaphosa last week led a government delegation in a meeting with a civil society organisation to discuss…

Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za ESKOM’S chief financial officer, Calib Cassim, on Friday made an impassioned plea to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) to objectively consider the utility’s application for a 20.5 percent tariff increase because any shortfalls in revenue generation still have to be covered by the government as a major shareholder and ultimately, consumers. On the last day of the public hearings, Cassim said previous Nersa decisions had been fraught with mistakes which were repeated in subsequent times, for example, in 2019 when the regulator corrected the employee bene-fit determination after the high court found that the approach used had been based on incorrect criteria. “If we cannot. as Eskom, recover the money through the tariff that is an electricity consumer base which is far…

Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za LEMON producers in the country are on tenterhooks over an impeding decision by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) on whether South Africa is dumping lemons in that country, which may effectively close off a viable market for the local industry. While there are various products including lemon juice concentrates, cosmetics, cleaning material and others that could be produced from local harvest, the fresh lemon market in the US is a mainstay for local producers and would lead to a glut, if South Africa is closed off. “We are in the phase of a preliminary determination stage … It is actually impossible to predict which way the decision will go, and we have put in a strong case at the oral hearing,” SA Juice Association general manager…

THURSDAY, January 13, 17:25:44 South African time, will be remembered as a landmark moment in the history of South African space technology. Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket Transporter-3 into space from the Cape Canaveral launch site in Florida, US. What makes this moment remarkable is not that it was the rocket of a South African-born person, but that it carried three nanosatellites from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) among the 105 spacecraft on board the SmallSat rideshare mission of SpaceX. The launch of the three cube satellites, named MDASat-1 a to c, is the culmination of a dedicated strategy of developing space engineering at CPUT since 2008. This strategy eventually led to the successful development, the 2013 launch and operation of CPUT’s first…

Dieketseng Maleke dieketseng.maleke@inl.co.za Both JSE-LISTED retailers The Foschini Group (TFG) and Truworths on Friday reported stronger sales performances and growth in the quarter to end-December. TFG’s shares closed 4.19 percent higher to R136.21 after the clothing, homeware, and jewellery retailer reported a strong performance. The company attributes post-Covid-19 recovery, global vaccine drive and the easing of lockdown restrictions as some of the reasons that led to the stellar results. On Friday it reported a turnover growth of 17.3 percent, compared to the same period in 2020. “The majority of the group’s outlets deliv ered strong trading performance as economic activity resumed,” TFG said. The group – whose 29 brands include Markham, Jet, @home, American Swiss, Sterns, and Totalsports – said its Homeware sales rose by nearly 33…