{"id":545710,"date":"2021-12-10T07:39:34","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T05:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=545710"},"modified":"2021-12-10T07:39:34","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T05:39:34","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1184","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/545710\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-1184\/","title":{"rendered":"5 important things happening in South Africa today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Coronavirus<\/strong>: In South Africa, there have been 22,391 new cases of Covid-19, taking the total reported to 3,093,452. Deaths have reached 90,060 (+22), while recoveries have climbed to 2,870,329, leaving the country with a balance of 133,063 active cases. The total number of vaccines administered is 26,917,603 (+135,961).<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Omicron:<\/strong> Academics say that evidence points to the fourth Covid wave in South Africa being less severe than the previous three &#8211; but the Omicron virus is proving to be far more virulent. The Pfizer vaccine has been approved for a third dose in adults over 18. On Thursday, health authorities announced that a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine has been approved for teens aged 12-17. No booster shot has yet been approved for South Africans who have received a Johnson &amp; Johnson Covid-19 vaccine \u2014 it&#8217;s only for health workers at this stage. The second dose should be taken at least 42 days after the first shot. For adults, the third booster shot is to be taken six months after the second. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymaverick.co.za\/article\/2021-12-09-all-systems-go-for-pfizer-third-dose-but-no-boosters-yet-for-those-who-received-the-jj-vaccine\/\">Daily Maverick<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>E-tolls:<\/strong> E-toll compliance in Gauteng has reached its lowest point ever, with only 18% of motorists paying their bills. Compiance was just over 21% in 2020 and 22% in 2019. It saw a brief spike during high levels of lockdown &#8211; to over 23% &#8211; but this was due to light motor vehicles being off the road during this time. The bulk of compliant road users are heavy freight and truck fleets that are effectively forced to pay. Civil action group Outa believes compliance is below 15% in reality but says it&#8217;s a moot point as even at 18%, Sanral cannot afford the cost of toll collection at these levels. Sanral extended the contract of toll collections group ETC by another two months. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneyweb.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/gauteng-e-toll-payment-compliance-at-its-lowest-level-ever\/\">Moneyweb<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Taxing:<\/strong> SARS is turning its attention to &#8216;thousands&#8217; of companies who have PPE contracts with the government who may not be fully compliant with the country&#8217;s tax laws. It is also looking at entities, and South Africans linked to the &#8216;Pandora Papers&#8217; &#8211; a record of millions of secret and hidden bank accounts uncovered in the world&#8217;s tax havens. The new focus is due to the &#8220;early success&#8221; the revenue service achieved using advanced methods of risk profiling. It has been gathering data from domestic and international sources, which are input into machine learning models for risk profiling and case selection. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.news24.com\/fin24\/companies\/sars-tax-crackdown-turns-to-ppe-vendors-pandora-papers-20211209\">News24<\/a> &#8211; paywall]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Certainty:<\/strong> While the ministerial advisory committee has said that locking down domestic travel over the holiday period would be ineffective in stopping the spread of the Omicron variant, businesses in the local travel industry are still wrought with uncertainty. The MD of Flight Centre Travel Group South Africa has penned an open letter to the government, calling for a clear answer on inter-provincial travel. He said that the local tourism industry needs the government&#8217;s support and word from the president that travel plans will be secure. It will create some certainty for customers and get them travelling across the country. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.702.co.za\/articles\/434318\/dear-mr-president-sa-needs-certainty-on-inter-provincial-travel-and-soon?ref=pid:93\">702<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Markets<\/strong>: The South African rand dropped almost 2% on Thursday as manufacturing output slumped far more sharply than expected in October. Statistics South Africa data showed industrial production fell 8.9% year on year, versus economists&#8217; predictions for a 1.4% decline, probably because of a steel and engineering sector strike. South Africa&#8217;s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic this year has been uneven across sectors, with riots in July contributing to an economic contraction in the third quarter. On Friday, the rand was trading at R16.00\/$, R18.07\/\u20ac and R21.15\/\u00a3. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasdaq.com\/articles\/south-african-rand-drops-almost-2-as-manufacturing-slumps\">Reuters<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The second dose of Pfizer&#8217;s Covid vaccine has been approved for children aged 12-17; E-tolls compliance levels have reached a record low; SARS is going after Covid tenderpreneurs; and the local tourism industry asks Ramaphosa for certainty over December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":479183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-545710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545710","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=545710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545734,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545710\/revisions\/545734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}