by Paul Burkhardt and Michael Cohen – Bloomberg 6 February 2019 South Africa is looking to spend billions of rand to secure energy from megaprojects on the continent at a time when state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. is broke and struggling to supply enough electricity. The government has signaled a willingness to buy 5,000 megawatts of […]

In the present scheme of things, monetary policy tools – such as raising or cutting interest rates – have reached their limit. It is fiscal policy – decisions by National Treasury to increase spending, raise taxes – that requires attention. Matthew Kofi Ocran, Professor of Economics, University of the Western Cape Since South Africa adopted […]

 President Cyril Ramaphosa at the WEF Global Press Conference, Davos-Klosters, Switzerland 23 January 2019 Ministers and officials from South Africa, Members of the media, Ladies and Gentlemen, Thank you for this opportunity to brief you on the visit by Team South Africa to Davos 2019 and to offer some views on developments in our […]

The race is on to see who will replace outgoing World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. Danny Bradlow, SARCHI Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations, University of Pretoria The World Bank will launch the process for selecting the new World Bank President on 7 February. There’s been a great deal of talk […]

Mmusi Maimane, Leader of the Democratic Alliance 20 January 2019 Former Bosasa COO, Angelo Agrizzi’s testimony before the Zondo Commission shattered the myth that corruption in the ANC was simply a feature of Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family. A system of corruption that builds a wall between insiders and outsiders – the “haves” and […]

“The independent central bank is one of the constitutional principles that underpinned the writing of the Constitution. When you talk about changing the mandate of the Reserve Bank, you are then talking about changing the Constitution.”  17 January 2019 The Monetary Policy Committee has unanimously decided to keep the repurchase rate unchanged at 6.75% […]

Pierre de Vos, Constitutionally Speaking – 16 January 2019 Earlier this week, Business Day reported that financial institutions may approach the Constitutional Court if the South African government forces pension funds to invest in bankrupt state-owned enterprises. This is in response to a proposal in the ANC election manifesto that the government will investigate the introduction of prescribed assets […]

Usman W. Chohan, Economist, UNSW A series of recent events has raised concerns about the vitality of the largest group of emerging countries, commonly referred to as BRICS, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These include Jair Bolsonaro’s recent election in Brazil, instability in international financial markets, pre–election uncertainty in India, government shutdown in the United States and, most importantly, the trade war Sino-American. Member […]

Instead of announcing bold new initiatives to stimulate economic growth and job creation, the ANC has decided to simply “expropriate” ordinary South Africans’ savings to try to save bloated and corrupt State-Owned Entities such as SAA and ESKOM. Alf Lees MP, DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Finance – 13 January 2019 The Democratic Alliance (DA) will […]

Kenneth Creamer, Senior Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand Are universities teaching the right kind of economics? Are they equipping students with the right kind of skills? These are some of the questions academics in the economics discipline have been grappling with for quite some time. Over the past five years the discussions and debates have […]