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/ 13 February 2009
Cricket South Africa’s position has always been that the people of Zimbabwe must decide who their political leaders must be.
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/ 30 October 2008
Trevor Manuel’s medium-term budget policy statement could have taken a more aggressive approach.
Consumers will be shrinking from the pain of high interest rates for a year or so more.
The distribution of wealth in post-apartheid South Africa has become more unequal, writes Réjane Woodroffe.
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/ 22 February 2008
This budget was expected to deliver solutions that would put at bay fears of slower GDP growth because of inadequate energy resources. However, the budget proposals fell short of providing incentives that will lead to the behaviour changes needed to make South Africa more energy efficient, writes Réjane Woodroffe.
This week the JSE All Share Index convincingly broke through to new highs beyond the psychologically important 30 000 level. Since the market lows in mid-August the local market is up about 17% in rands and 25% in dollars. South African markets are following the energetic march of global emerging markets.
Global stock markets have lost about 6,5% from their peak in mid-July, with levels of volatility not seen since the 1997/98 emerging-market crisis and the credit-market crisis of 2002/03 led by the collapse of Worldcom and Enron. Just prior to this market fall-out, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised global growth expectations for 2007 and 2008 from 4,9% to 5,2% .
After eight years of unprecedented economic growth and equity and bond market strength, investors have started to question whether emerging markets will be able to maintain their positive momentum. Annual inflows into emerging market funds reached record levels of more than $15-billion last year.