{"id":125407,"date":"2016-06-02T08:31:24","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T06:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=125407"},"modified":"2016-06-02T08:31:24","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T06:31:24","slug":"5-things-in-business-you-need-to-know-today-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/125407\/5-things-in-business-you-need-to-know-today-3\/","title":{"rendered":"5 things in business you need to know today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what is happening in the markets:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/business\/news\/gordhan-confident-as-ratings-review-looms-2029369\">Finance minister Pravin Gordhan is confident that South Africa will avoid a ratings downgrade ahead of the announcement from Standard &amp; Poor&#8217;s on Friday<\/a><\/strong>. Gordhan said that government has done enough to avoid the June hurdle, but in the next six months, would have to do a lot more.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/thetimes\/2016\/06\/02\/Consultants-a-R3-billion-joke\">The Auditor General has found that South African municipalities have spent R3.4 billion on consultants in the past financial year<\/a><\/strong>. The AG said that the use of consultants remains a concern as many municipalities do not establish\u00a0measures to monitor the performance of consultants, and keep no record of skills transfer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand firmed on Wednesday as the dollar pulled\u00a0back from a recent rally, but traders said the local unit was\u00a0likely to tread a narrow range as investors await Friday&#8217;s\u00a0credit rating review from Standard &amp; Poor&#8217;s. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencycharts\/?from=USD&amp;to=ZAR\">On Thursday the rand was trading at R15.58 to the dollar, R22.48 to the pound and R17.45 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In global news,\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/southAfricaNews\/idAFL8N18U08W\">Asian stocks eased on Thursday after surveys showed global\u00a0manufacturing activity and demand remain weak<\/a><\/strong>, while a jump\u00a0in the yen sent Japan&#8217;s Nikkei reeling more than 2 percent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-global-oil-idUSKCN0YO03R\">Oil prices were steady on Thursday on mixed market signals\u00a0ahead of an OPEC meeting in Vienna<\/a><\/strong>, which analysts said was\u00a0not expected to result in restrictions on crude output.\u00a0International Brent crude oil futures were trading at $49.77 per barrel, up 5 cents from their last settlement, while US\u00a0crude was down 9 cents at $48.92 a barrel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>In other news<\/strong>:\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/politics\/2016\/06\/01\/Next-leader-of-ANC-should-be-young-person%E2%80%9A-says-ANCYL-president\">ANCYL president Collen Maine has told the &#8220;old&#8221; people in the ANC to step aside, saying the next leader of the party should be a young person<\/a><\/strong>. He said the youth drive revolution, and that ANC members over 70 should move aside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what is happening in and affecting the South African market today (2 June 2016)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":6423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-125407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-finance","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125409,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125407\/revisions\/125409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}