Unfortunately in life there are only two groups of people. Its either you are a leader or a follower. An entrepeneur or an employee. You either choose to sell or be sold to. Produce or consume.

This phenomenon is synonimous throughout society and we are inherently making these decisions daily as we make our paces through the journey that we call life. There is nothing wrong with being on either side of the fence but it pretty much determines where you are going to end up as far as financial freedom is concerned.

Being a leader,trendsetter, entrepeneur, producer or seller is the difficult side of things because it involves convincing or getting buy in from other people, it means most of the time you are thinking outside the box about what the rest of society does not normally think anout. You are constantly exercising your imagination to the “possibilites” of things that have not been thought of before, and usually you are faced with a lot of resistance to change, but as with every great risk, there is a greater reward; so its either you choose the easy way..or the hard way, but whichever way you go, the rewards are reciprocated. Its in all of us to choose mediocrity or exceptional.

Wilbert Chaniwa
Founder
Nexus Business Network

Business is essentially about creating cashflows. The fewer cashflows your business posseses, the more likely the business is to be affected by environmental factors, low and high demand periods, in terms of income streams. The most successful business in the Blue Chip company group on the New York Stock exchange have their hands stuck in a lot of pots. Property, Stock Options and investments and shares in businesses that have support services to their main line products and not to mention shares in competitor companies are only but a few ways to spread the risk of your business.

And so it would apply, as an individual, you need to also reduce the risk. Its not enough to depend on a salary of one job or run a business that only has one product or service,as your means of income. Increase the pots that you have as cashflows. Have 2 jobs, set up a small business that you manage on weekends or after hours, create an investment portfolio through various hedge funds available on the market, invest in other businesses that have different product and service lines other than your own. Think actively about how to create more than one cashflow to keep your risk low.

Until you have this in place, you are in a position of high risk and low returns. Increase your options.

Regards,
Wilbert Chaniwa
Founder
Nexus Business Network

Eskom has been granted a 31.3% tariff increase by the National Energy Regulator of SA(Nersa). The hike will come into effect on 1 July 2009. Eskom had wanted a 34% increase but they have only been allowed to increase tariffs by 31.3% which is still a substantial amount. With the current state of the South Africa economy, this hike is not going to go down well with consumers. This increase will affect every consumer no matter who you are. But the consumer, as hard as it will be, will have to bare with Eskom as they needed this increase in tariffs. Eskom have been trying since January last year to get a hike. They need to increase the electricity infrastructure in the country to meet the increasing demand of electricity.

The wait is almost over, the cost of telecommunications and Internet connectivity is set to be slashed soon when the 17 000km SEACOM fibre-optic undersea cable comes online this month in Southern and Eastern Africa. The cable is set to go live on 27 June. SEACOM would offer wholesale internet bandwidth - several times the current availability - to companies such as Neotel, Telkom, MTN and Vodacom. That should mean that these companies will be purchasing their bulk bandwidth at a fraction of the cost that they are currently paying and thus they should pass on this savings to us the consumer! I would be very mad if they do not do so!

I for example spend R389 a month for 2GB of bandwidth from Vodacom. This 2GB is just not enough for me during the month and to get it up to 3GB I would have to pay an extra R200 for that extra 1GB!!! There is no indication yet from any of the companies on how much we will now be paying for Internet bandwidth but the hope is that it will be a substantial drop. I am hoping to hear something along the lines of R100 for 5GB!

This SEACOM cable should not only mean we have cheaper bandwidth but it is also going to result in us having faster internet connectivity. Faster connectivity will mean that we will be able to do more online in a shorter space of time and also be able to watch HDTV and multi-media over the internet. Could this signal the demise of DSTV? We may not need satellite dishes anymore if we can watch TV via the internet! I see a lot of changes taking place thanks to this cable and it should all benefit us the consumer and businesses as a whole.

Get set for a hike in the price of petrol! The department of minerals and energy has revised the price of Wednesday’s petrol increase from 16c to 17c a litre. They have given no reason for this change. The decrease in diesel prices has also been revised. Diesel prices will decrease by 11.5c a litre and not 12.9c as stated on Friday, while 0.005% diesel will decline by 12.5 cents instead of 13.9 cents. Wholesale paraffin still decreases by nine cents and illuminating paraffin by 12c. Petrol in Gauteng will now cost 752c a litre from 735c before and 738c on April 1, and it is now 727c at the coast from 710c before.

The Reserve Bank dropped their key repo rate by a further 1% today, led by the extremely weak economic data released 2 days ago. The repo rate is now 7.5% whilst the banks prime lending rate drops down to 11%. As most countries across the world have continued to lower interest rates during this harsh economic climate, there is suggestion that todays slashing of interest rates in South Africa could be the last cut we will see in a while. Some analysts predict that we will have one more rate cut in June and it will only be a 50 basis point drop and then from there we will not see any further cuts as the MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) would have done all it can.

We heard Maki’s views yesterday with regards to the recession in South Africa. Today it is now official that South Africa is in a recession according to the statistics released. South Africa’s real gross domestic product (GDP) dropped on a quarter-on-quarter basis by -6.4% in the first quarter of 2009, from -1.8% in the fourth quarter of 2008.This signals the first recession in 17 years for South Africa. Before the release of these figures today, analysts had predicted growth to decrease by 3.9% so considering that it came in at 6.4% was a big shock.