Finance

5 important things happening in South Africa today

Staff Writer

 ·31 Oct 2019

Here’s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:

• Economists and analysts have given Tito Mboweni’s medium-term budget speech a thumbs down, saying that, while it was an honest reflection of the state of the economy, it did not do enough to address the problems. This includes not doing anything on the expenditure side, which is the only place government can actually save money. This is mainly down to political obstacles, including internal factions and unions. [Daily Maverick]

• South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Wednesday threatened to shut down the country’s power sector over the government’s decision to forge ahead with a plan to break up struggling state power firm Eskom. Government plans to split Eskom into three – which the union says will lead to job losses. Unions previously shut down power and threatened workers, which caused widespread power outages.[Reuters]

• While government’s position is that e-tolling in Gauteng is here to stay and motorists must pay up – the clear response from drivers is that they aren’t going to start paying now. Civil group Outa said that there is still a court battle that needs to take place over e-tolls, with a test case on the matter having been put on ice for 8 months. The group said that the project will never get to the 90% compliance levels it needs to be effective. [IOL, Moneyweb]

• The final VBS executive has been sequestered, with all five now in line to have their assets seized. The bank’s liquidators are going after the executives’ assets for their role in wide-spread fraud at the group, which saw R2 billion looted from its coffers. The executives have denied wrongdoing and tried to appeal the sequestering, but failed to do so. [Business Day]

• South Africa’s rand suffered its steepest fall in more than a year on Wednesday after Finance Minister Tito Mboweni forecast wider budget deficits and a sharp increase in debt during his medium-term budget policy statement. The rand was down more than 2.4%. On Thursday the rand was at R14.97 to the dollar, R19.35 to the pound and R16.71 to the euro.