Classic Business

Gordon Angus, Executive Director, SAEFA

The headline on Reuters the other day read ‘SA plans to vaccinate 200 000 people per day from ‘around May’. Around May, is again simply too late and too vague to be of any use really.

Ahead of Easter, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize’s advisers have recommended the reintroduction of tighter restrictions on alcohol sales and public gatherings to try to avoid a devastating new Covid-19 wave that could see hospital admissions up to a quarter higher than the previous surge. Experts fear that the slow pace of SA’s vaccine rollout, the dominance of the new and highly transmissible variant 501Y.V2, and the arrival of cooler weather are set to combine to potentially deadly effect.

To find out what is going on with the vaccine rollout Michael Avery spoke to Stavros Nicolaou head of the health working group for B4SA; and Professor Alex van den Heever, chair in the field of Social Security Systems Administration and Management Studies at the Wit's School of Governance.

Caroline Rheeder, Associate Director for Customs at Cova Advisory

While the President has sought to leverage infrastructure as the centerpiece of his economic policy since 2018 and now with greater urgency since the Covid Pandemic, a new report commissioned by Business Leadership SA and conducted by consultancy Intellidex shows that Infrastructure investment has fallen sharply over the past six years, from 20.3% of GDP in 2015 to 17.9% in 2019, far from the National Development Plan’s target of 30% of GDP.

But every crisis creates an opportunity as the report points out and “South Africa now has the opportunity to calibrate its infrastructure procurement framework to unleash high volumes of investment. But change comes with risks.”

A key component of this is through Public-Private Partnerships but the question is what needs to happen to unlock these.

Michael Avery hosted Busi Mavuso, CEO of Business Leadership SA, & Dr Stuart Theobald, Chairman of Intellidex, for conversation on what these suggested changes are and what risks need to managed to unleash this potential in PPPs.

Tinashe Ruzane, co-founder FlexClub

Athol Williams, Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town, Graduate School of Business in the Allan Gray Centre for Values-Based Leadership

Alexandra Felekis, Partner Webber Wentzel

Makwe Masilela, CIO of Makwe Fund Managers

Nick Kunze, portfolio manager at Sanlam Private Wealth

It was a busy week from a container ship blocking the Suez Canal, to the Zuma faction continuing to try and block the constitution, we are guaranteed that one will eventually be dislodged.

In an ominous statement sent out late on Thursday night, former president Zuma issued a scarcely veiled threat when he spoke of a revolution by “ordinary people like me”. This in the year when we celebrate the 25th anniversary of our constitution. And taken with the recent spate of violence in KzN, cannot be taken lightly.

And the MPC meeting this week delivered the expected no change but as former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India Raghuram Rajan once said, “Monetary policy is like juggling six balls... it is not 'interest rate up, interest rate down.' There is the exchange rate, there are long term yields, there are short term yields, there is credit growth.” So much still to consider.

Michael Avery spoke to Warwick Lucas Chief Investment Officer at Galileo Asset Managers, & Raymond Parsons, professor in the School of Business and Governance at North West University.

Gareth Stobie, MD Coreshares