The South African rand was little changed on Thursday as investors turned their attention to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s national address for insights on future economic and political policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rand traded at 18.55 against the dollar, not far from its previous close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Friday, the rand strengthened slightly, trading at R18.45 to the dollar, R22.93 to the pound and R19.15 to the euro. Oil is trading lower at $74.66 a barrel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are five other news stories making waves in South Africa today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sasol’s big challenge<\/strong>: David Shapiro from Sasfin Securities says Sasol is facing a big challenge because it is not making enough money to reinvest in its productive plants. The group is expecting a massive drop in earnings for the six months ended 31 December 2024, decreasing between 26% and 36%. [Daily Investor<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Goodbye phone calls:\u00a0<\/strong>The latest Voice Services and UC&C report shows that revenue from the Voice services halved in the last four years. BMIT managing director Chris Geerdts says this drop is due to the increased uptake of communication applications such as WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams. The decline is expected to continue. [MyBroadband<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n SONA disappointment:<\/strong>\u00a0Opposition parties are not satisfied with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation address (SONA), saying it did not outline concrete plans to address the country’s challenges and did not account for promises made in previous SONAs.<\/span> Ramaphosa’s speech touched on many of the same topics from previous years, with more of the same promises. [TimesLive<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3,500 job cuts go ahead:<\/strong> ArcelorMittal CEO Kobus Verster said the 3,500 job cuts in Vereeniging, Newcastle and Amras in Mpumalanga will proceed. ArcelorMittal expects to hear about government assistance later this year. Verster noted that the company understands the frustrations of workers and how the company morale may be negatively impacted by the job cuts. [eNCA<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n SpaceX dumps South Africa:<\/strong>\u00a0SpaceX, the operator of the Starlink satellite constellation, has officially withdrawn from the public hearings into a proposed new satellite licensing framework in SA. This after the company failed to make an appearance in their timeslot on Wednesday. The group previously gave in a written submission, and asked the committee to use that in their considerations. [News24<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here are 5 important things happening in South Africa today (7 February 2025).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":794008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20398],"tags":[853],"class_list":["post-810743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5-things","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810743","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\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810743"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810756,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810743\/revisions\/810756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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