Explore the Category
South African President, Jacob Zuma, has decided to remove the Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, from their posts. Minister Malusi Gigaba, who led the home affairs ministry has been appointed as the new Finance Minister with Sifiso Buthelezi, a member of parliament, as his deputy. While the two officials are not strangers to public office, they have not served at the National Treasury before.
After days of speculation, and urgent pleas for President Jacob Zuma to cast aside his impasse with Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, Zuma fired Gordhan and Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas in what the media is labelling the Night of the Long Knives.
Although the South African Reserve Bank left its repo rate unchanged at 7.00% at the conclusion of its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on 30 March 2017, it signalled the peak of its interest rate hiking cycle has probably been reached, given current available information. The key development is the Bank’s inflation forecast, which has been lowered to reflect a decline in the annual advance in headline CPI to 5.6% by Q4 2017, from 6.3% in February 2017, followed by an average of 5.4% in 2018. Importantly, core inflation is expected to average just 5.4% and 5.2% in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
One of the biggest issues in South Africa in 2016 was the potential downgrade to junk status by global credit ratings agencies.While we avoided being downgraded twice last year (in June and November), there are significant fears that we will not be able to repeat the herculean efforts of last year.
If you had to hazard a guess, when do you reckon the COFI Bill will be signed into law?