It has now become fairly routine to have power cuts in South Africa these days. The countries power utility, Eskom, has for the last couple of weeks been warning the public that there will be continued load shedding across the country due to maintenance work being carried out on their plants. For how long can this ‘maintenance’ work they say they are doing carry on before it seriously affects businesses? Read the rest of this entry »

After the interest rate hike last week and the fuel price increase all looks gloomy but could there be some light at the end of the tunnel in January when it comes to fuel prices? Some South African economists predict that the price of fuel in South Africa could go down in January next year due to the strengthening of the Rand and the falling world oil prices.

The economists say that consumers in South Africa are paying too much for fuel. This could see a drop in prices in January by as much as 14 cents per litre for petrol, 26 cents a litre for diesel and 31 cents per litre for paraffin.

Today, the Reserve Bank governor, Tito Mboweni, announced that interest rates in South Africa will go up by 50 basis points as many of us had predicted to the lead up to this announcement. The repo rate, which is the rate the Reserve Bank lends money to commercial banks, is now 11% and the prime lending rate is now 14.5%. Rates have now gone up by 450 basis points since June last year. Read the rest of this entry »

It all seems to be catching up now, data released today shows that South Africa’s new vehicle sales fell by 13.8% year on year in November to only 47 707 units. These figures released by the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa) also show that sales for the first 11 months of 2007 are 4.3% lower than the same period in 2006. This is a clear sign that consumer are starting to buy fewer cars. Read the rest of this entry »