5 important things happening in South Africa today
Here’s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:
Eskom CEO rejection: The appointment of a new CEO of Eskom has hit a wall after the recommendation made by the Eskom board was not accepted by Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan. According to Eskom’s memorandum of incorporation (MOI), “the board evaluate potential candidates for appointment as the GCEO and submit to the shareholder a shortlist of 3 (three) candidates”. It is unclear whether the Eskom board should add two other frontrunners to the list or start the process anew. [News24]
Rand warning: The rand is headed to a new low against the dollar as it faces a double whammy of a worsening fiscal position and a widening current account deficit, boding ill for importers and threatening to drive up prices at a time when the Reserve Bank’s victory against inflation seemed in sight. HSBC analysts expect the rand to settle at R19.50/$ by year-end before tumbling to R25.50/$ in 2024. [Business Day]
Road accident economic cost: The more than 10,000 fatal car accidents on South Africa’s roads during 2022 cost the country’s economy in excess of R186 billion, translating to 3.3% of the annual GDP and a cost of R7.8 million per crash. The costs include the loss of productivity of the victims, cost of medical treatment, crash clean up, emergency medical services including the presence of the South African police, funeral costs, infrastructure damage, and long-term economic consequences of the loss of income, and the impact on the victim’s family and dependents. [TopAuto]
Load shedding suspension extended: Power utility Eskom says that further improvements in generating capacity have allowed it to suspend load shedding for most of the day on Wednesday. The group said that load shedding would be suspended from midnight until 16h00 – then jumping back to stage 3 outages until Thursday morning. [BusinessTech]
Markets: The South African rand firmed on Tuesday as markets await local inflation figures and a central bank interest rate decision in the days ahead. “Idling for most of the day, the rand has managed to find some marginal strength later on in the day,” said Shaun Murison, senior market analyst at IG. On Wednesday (20 September), the rand was trading at R18.94/USD, R20.22/EUR and R23.46/GBP. Oil is trading at $93.44 a barrel. [Reuters]
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