The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has requested the country’s four major commercial banks to introduce a payment validation system on each of their electronic banking applications to prevent incorrect electronic tax payments. Sars said on Wednesday First National Bank will be the first to begin in April.
South African-listed diversified industrial company Bidvest Group has made an offer of Aus$6 per share to buy out minorities in Bidvest plc, its food service distribution subsidiary listed on the Luxembourg and Australian Stock Exchanges in which it has an 81% interest.
Sales at South Africa’s 30th annual Nederburg Auction on April 2 and 3, arguably the highlight of the wine industry’s calendar, saw wine sales fall by 11,2% to R6,73-million from the record R7,58-million achieved in 2003, the first time a decline has been recorded since 1993.
The South African Revenue Service was just more than R500-million short of its revenue target of R303,3-billion at the end of the 2003/04 financial year, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel said on Thursday. The Budget deficit for the financial year is likely to be less than the 2,6% of gross domestic product estimated in the February 2004 Budget.
Old Mutual plc, the London- and South African-listed financial services company that is South Africa’s largest life insurer, has reinforced its support for troubled banking subsidiary Nedcor, while maintaining a tough line on its future performance.
Two South African hedge funds managed by Peregrine Capital have come in tops in terms of investment performance in the latest Hedge Fund Review conducted by Nedcor Retail Investments for the 12 months to end-January 2004.
Listed financial services group Metropolitan Holdings expects to return some amount of excess capital to shareholders in its new 2004 financial year, probably via some combination of a share buy-back programme, special dividend and strong dividend policy, according to CEO Peter Doyle.
Johan van Zyl, CEO of Sanlam Limited, South Africa’s second-largest financial services group, says the outlook for the country’s insurance industry in 2004 is a positive one, and he is expecting an improvement in performance from Sanlam going forward.
Sanlam, South Africa’s second-largest financial services group, is expected to report basically unchanged pro-forma headline earnings per share based on a long-term rate of return when the company announces its results for the year to the end of December 2003 on Thursday.
South African Minister of Minerals and Energy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on Monday urged the country’s major coal miners to speed up their efforts to improve black economic empowerment in the industry, particularly by identifying smaller coal operations that could be turned over to new entrants.