Flash Briefing: DA wants Joburg mayor, EOH to face crime trial; Govt must take med scheme surpluses – health body

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• The Democratic Alliance says it will lay criminal charges against Joburg mayor Geoff Makhubo and IT company EOH for alleged corruption. This comes after evidence presented at the Zondo Commission revealed that EOH paid millions to ANC politicians in donations and made irregular payments in exchange for lucrative tenders, says MyBroadband.co.za. Testifying at the commission last year, EOH CEO Stephen van Coller said an investigation – instigated by him – into corruption uncovered both undisguised and disguised donations to the ANC. He further revealed that irregular payments at EOH stand at approximately R865m.
• SA inflation rose to 4.4% in Apr 2021, above expectations – with the increase driven by food and fuel. Food now a more pronounced concern. Base effects and electricity will push inflation a little higher. During 2020 consumer inflation averaged 3.3% – the lowest that the annual average inflation rate South Africa has experienced since 2005. Traders raised bets that South Africa’s central bank will tighten policy this year after inflation accelerated more than expected, resulting in a negative real interest rate for the first time in more than five years, reports Bloomberg. But Stanlib chief economist Kevin Lings says his team still expects SA inflation to remain well inside the inflation target for the foreseeable future, averaging around 4.3% for 2021 and 4.5% in 2022. This should allow the Reserve Bank to keep interest rates unchanged for an extended period, says Lings.
• South African Medical aids are in the firing line amid calls for all reserves and assets to be handed to the NHI system, reports BusinessTech. Health Professions Council president, professor Simon Nemutandani, told parliament this week that the current reserves of medical schemes and all other assets under their control should be transferred to the NHI. Medical scheme reserves in South Africa are estimated to be more than R90bn. “It should be clear that the (NHI) replaces all funding mechanisms for health,” Nemutandani is quoted as saying.
• The Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Ms Thoko Didiza, has declared outbreaks of locusts in the Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape. (Northern Cape govt officials have advised residents not to panic or kill them, but to chase them away “politely” and turn their outside lights off at night, reports Business Insider. They say they can’t help with chemical control because of the nature of the chemicals required to control the brown locusts). Dr Gerhard Verdoorn, operations and stewardship manager at CropLife South Africa, has warned that the recent huge outbreaks of brown locusts in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa could cause a humanitarian crisis, he told Farmer’s Weekly.
• Covid-19 is reopening a rift between economies in the world’s richest and poorest nations, driven by growth rates that are moving firmly in opposite directions, says BizNews Premium partner The Wall Street Journal. In the US, economists are forecasting a return to boomtime growth levels of the “roaring 20s”; China’s economy expanded at a record 18.3% in the first quarter; and the UK is growing faster than at any time since the end of World War II. Yet across the developing world, where people are largely unvaccinated and governments are unable to afford sustained stimulus measures, economies are falling further behind, struggling to rebound from last year’s record contraction.The International Monetary Fund, which calls the dynamic “the great divergence”, warns that many developing economies outside the advanced economies and China could languish for years.