Cape Times 2023-10-05

‘More than 35 000 mining jobs are on the line, and Transnet is sinking fast’ says Cosatu’ MORE than 35 000 mining jobs are on the line, Transnet was sinking fast and the government needed to make the parastatal as much of a priority as it did Eskom, Cosatu acting national spokesperson Matthew Parks said yesterday. He said the country no longer had time to wait for a new CEO to be appointed to Transnet, nor could it afford a similar situation to occur as what happened at Eskom, where it had taken a year to fill the position of CEO. He said the actions taken by the government to fix the problems at Eskom appeared to be bearing fruit. He said Transnet was “in a deep crisis”…

FIRSTRAND yesterday said Alan Pul- linger will step down as group CEO after a career at the financial services firm spanning 26 years, and will be succeeded by Mary Vilakazi, currently group chief operating officer (COO) effective from April 1, 2024. Vilakazi will lead a company valued at more than R355 billion, which is the owner of RMB, WesBank, Aldermore and FNB. Last month FirstRand posted a 12% firming in normalised earnings, which amounted to R36.7bn and yielded a similar rate of growth in annual dividends at 384 cents for the full year to the end of June 2023. Pullinger said: “The depth and quality of the FirstRand management team means that stepping down as CEO, and the subsequent changes that this decision prompts, is a seamless…

THE rand pared some losses late in the afternoon yesterday after plummeting to its weakest level in four months for the second day in a row, with stocks on the JSE also plunging to a 11-month low on the global sell-off of South African assets. The currency fell to R19.41 to the US dollar during early morning trade, its lowest since May when South Africa had a diplomatic fallout with the US over the docking of the sanctioned Russian vessel Lady R in Simon’s Town. However, the rand made some gains during the day, strengthening to R19.18/$1 in the afternoon before closing 0.4% lower at R19.39/$1 by 5pm. The rand has been pressured by a stronger dollar and surging US Treasury yields, which has been driving investors to the…

THERE is no festive cheer in sight for the local poultry sector after Minister of Trade, Industry, and Competition Ebrahim Patel yesterday called for the suspension of anti-dumping duties on poultry for 12-months in a bid to cushion local South African consumers. Yesterday Patel requested the International Trade Administration Commission (Itac) to review the tariffs on imported poultry so that a temporary tariff relief rebate could be enacted to counter the domestic supply crunch. Patel directed Itac to consider the creation of a temporary rebate provision on meat and edible offal, fresh, chilled or frozen of fowls of the species Gallus Domesticus classifiable under HS0207.1. South Africans are currently facing supermarket shelves with a shortage of eggs and chicken amid the worst case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in…

SOUTH African petrol service stations lost a minimum R7 billion profit on petrol sales for the past 10 years, because of poor regulation by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE), Reggie Sibiya, the CEO of the Fuel Retailers Association (FRA), said yesterday. The FRA said it was successful last month in the High Court against the minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, adding the Regulatory Accounting System in Petroleum (RAS) made no provision for Entrepreneurial Compensation (EC). The ruling paved the way for retailers to get EC. The DMRE did not respond to request for comment. Sibiya said the EC claw backs had been rising between 5 cents per litre (cpl) to 15cpl for the past decade between various oil majors. Approxi- mately 65% of service…

LAST MONTH, the Gauteng High Court Division of South Africa, Johannesburg, ruled that fuel retailers were entitled to full Entrepreneurial Compensation (EC) and should not have to negotiate with the oil companies to ‘forfeit’ a part of the capex. This after the Fuel Retailers Association (FRA) applied to review and set aside a decision to adopt and implement the regulatory accounting system (RAS) for the Petroleum Sector in a matter which was heard in October last year. FRA argued the RAS did not make provision in its retail margin for EC for retailers in Company Owned and Retailer Operated (Coro) sites. The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) contended that the EC should be negotiated from the capex portion of the retail margin by the oil companies forfeiting a…