It looks like the inevitable has arrived, Today Eskom came out to ask Tshwane and other cities across South Africa to start conserving electricity in order to prevent power shortages across the country. This is certainly not a good sign for the economy. Businesses will be affected if power shortages are experienced and this will in turn have a negative impact on the South Africa economy. Read the rest of this entry »

As we know of, we have been accustomed to several currency notes in South Africa, the R10, R20, R50, R100 and R200 notes. But there now seems to be a new dominant ‘note’ in the South Africa economy today and it is the credit card. The beauty of this ‘note’ is you can use it to make your purchases and the seller will not keep it, unlike when you give them a R100 note, instead they will gladly swipe it through a machine, make you sign a slip and give it back to you. Read the rest of this entry »

Figures released this week show that new car sales have dropped in South Africa over the last month. This is a sign that higher interest rates and stricter lending criteria are affecting consumers decisions to spend.

Vehicle sales in September were 13% lower than sales the same time last year. The sales figures having been declining over the last six months showing that fewer and fewer people are buying new cars. Yes there have been strikes in the motor industry last month which have affected supply but still even without these strikes I feel the sales figures would still be as low as they are. Read the rest of this entry »

With all the talk currently surrounding the inflation figures in South Africa a closer look has been taken regarding the price of vegetables in the country.

Research has shown that the price of vegetables has sky rocketed in South Africa over the last couple of months. The main reason for this price increase has been due to the extreme weather conditions being faced in South Africa which is hampering the production of vegetables. The supply of vegetables is just not meeting the demand and this could lead to consumers no longer being able to afford to buy vegetables which form such an important part of ones daily diet. Read the rest of this entry »

Fortune is one of those things in life that we will never be able to fully understand. Fortune comes in so many ways and often is disguised in forms that we are only able to realize after the fact.

Fortune comes to entrepreneurs in many ways. Fortune can be defined by closing a deal, launching a new service that increases revenue, meeting the right person just at the perfect moment to help your business, or making the right decision that catapults your business to new heights of success and notoriety. Read the rest of this entry »

A new set of figures is out and they show that online shopping in South Africa is on an upward spiral. It seems that finally more and more people in the country are shopping online.

The majority of online shopping in South Africa is done on airline websites, which continue to be the major factor behind the growth of online retail in the country. To put this into perspective, the five local air carriers : Kulula, 1Time, Mango, South African Airways and Nationwide, together accounted for R2.3bn in online sales in 2006 and this figure is expected to go up to R3bn in 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

I knew that would get your attention. It is not only here in South Africa that we are facing a fuel price increase this week but the same is set to happen in the UK. Tax rises have forced both petrol and diesel prices to go up to over £1 a litre.

Now converting that £1 to rand it works out to R14 a litre. It looks like the whole world is now set to increase their fuel prices and this is largely caused by the fact that world oil prices are going up on a regular basis. Does this mean that there is actually going to be a shortage of fuel in the future and thus low supply coupled with a high demand will continually push the price of fuel up? Read the rest of this entry »