{"id":261475,"date":"2018-07-27T11:06:36","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T09:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=261475"},"modified":"2018-07-27T11:06:36","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T09:06:36","slug":"big-money-to-be-made-at-taxpayers-expense-if-sa-nationalises-the-reserve-bank-kganyago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/261475\/big-money-to-be-made-at-taxpayers-expense-if-sa-nationalises-the-reserve-bank-kganyago\/","title":{"rendered":"Big money to be made at taxpayers expense if SA nationalises the Reserve Bank: Kganyago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Governor of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB),\u00a0Lesetja Kganyago, addressed<\/a> <\/strong>the 98th ordinary general meeting of SARB shareholders on Friday (27 July).<\/p>\n

As part of his address, Kganyago reflected on South Africa’s economy over the past year – including the rise and fall of ‘Ramaphoria’, South Africa’s disappointing growth in recent months, VBS’ failure, and Viceroy’s targeting of Capitec bank.<\/p>\n

Kganyago also talked about the possibility of nationalising the Reserve Bank in the near future.<\/p>\n

“Our mandate, to protect the value of the currency in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth in the country, remains unchanged and enshrined in the Constitution. We will continue to vigorously defend challenges to our independence and mandate,” he said.<\/p>\n

Kganyago noted that while private shareholders have no say in the running of the bank, they are important in that they\u00a0represent an additional layer in the governance framework of the SARB.<\/p>\n

“This helps to strengthen accountability and transparency,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Shareholder-elected board members add valuable expertise and inputs to the internal operations of the SARB.<\/p>\n

“Getting rid of private shareholders would not necessarily improve governance. The South African experience has taught us that boards appointed by government are no guarantee of good governance, nor are they a guarantee that decisions will be taken in the interest of the broader economy,” he said.<\/p>\n

Despite this,\u00a0Kganyago admitted that private shareholding in central banks is an historical legacy and is no longer common.<\/p>\n

“Admittedly, there is no strong argument, in principle, in favour of retaining private shareholders. However, we are concerned that the process could be expensive, as the shares trade for far less than what some existing shareholders are prepared to sell their shares for,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Indeed, it is the case that a group of shareholders is agitating for the SARB\u2019s nationalisation as they believe that they are entitled to a share of the assets of the SARB and see this as an opportunity to make enormous profits at the expense of taxpayers.<\/p>\n

“This could turn out to be a protracted legal process and a very expensive exercise for what would, at best, be a cosmetic gain.<\/p>\n

“To reiterate: whatever the shareholding structure, the primary mandate of the SARB will remain unchanged,” he said.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Reserve Bank officially launches new Mandela notes, coins and an app<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Governor of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB),\u00a0Lesetja Kganyago, has warned of the dangers of nationalising the Reserve Bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":251081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-261475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261475","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=261475"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261499,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261475\/revisions\/261499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}