South Africa’s stock market is set to surge within the next six months after months of negative sentiment weighing on equity markets, Investec, one of the country’s biggest fund managers, predicted. Jeremy Gardiner, head of Investec Asset Management’s Unit Trust business, said despite strong fundamentals, like a cheap market and positive earnings growth outlook, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) was failing to rally. Gardiner said he thought the bourse would rebound from oversold levels some time in the next six months, ”barring unforeseen circumstances,” The JSE is now trading at a price earnings ratio of 13, which is relatively cheap compared with other emerging markets. Gardiner saw a broad-based bounce in the market except for commodity firms, which he said had run strongly already as people bet on a turnaround in commodity prices. Gardiner added that the government says privatisation should rake in revenues of more than R40bn over the next three years, allowing it to start repaying debt next year. Investec sees privatisation revenues of R46bn between now and 2003, which it believes would also help boost foreign direct investment by R26bn in that period.- Reuters and Own Correspondent.