By Linda van Tilburg
- 151 out of the 201 South Africans living in the Wuhan area of China where the coronavirus first broke out, have indicated that they wished to return home and are going to be repatriated by the Government. Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced yesterday that they would be quarantined for 21 days as a precautionary measure. The government has identified 84 possible sites for the quarantine facility that would be guarded by the military and said the area would be declared a no-entry and no-flight zone. South Africa does not have any confirmed cases of the coronavirus, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases have indicated that so far 156 people have been tested and all the results were negative. Mkhize indicated that the repatriation of the South Africans from Wuhan is expected to take 10 days. Global policy makers are on alert to the economic fallout from the spreading of the coronavirus after stocks slumped last week. This weekend China released an index of manufacturing activity which indicated it had plunged to a record low. Bloomberg reports that it will renew fears that the world’s second-largest economy may not rebound as fast as first hoped.
- Trade union Cosatu and the South African Communist Party have confirmed that they have been invited to a meeting of the ANC’s working committee which takes place today where the proposed cut to the public sector pay bill could be on the agenda. It comes as Finance minister Tito Mboweni indicated in his budget speech that the government wanted to cut R160bn off the public pay bill over the next three years. Cosatu has rejected a proposal that the three year pay agreement that is in force and the prevailing annual pay increase adjusted to inflation minus three percentage point, should be re-opened saying it was a declaration of war. Stats SA is expected to release GDP figures for the fourth quarter of 2019.
- Pam Golding Properties will be the subject of a full-scale investigation into allegedly facilitating the sale of properties to the children of former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza without following legal requirements. The Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB) announced the “first of its kind” probe and indicated that it would look at whether Pam Golding violated the Financial Intelligence Act and was a party to money laundering and suspicious and unusual transactions. “It is alleged that the former political leaders and their families were laundering money by investing large sums of illegal monies in properties in South Africa, resulting in the artificial inflation of property prices and skewed market values”, the board said. The properties involved are said to worth R50m and are in Dainfern and the Kyalami Estate. The EAAB will meet the Financial Intelligence Centre in the coming days to finalise the scope of the investigation and on-site inspections at Pam Golding Properties will be carried out.
- The Rand is suffering its worst start to the year against the dollar since the global financial crisis in 2008 and Bloomberg reports that it’s not about to get any better in March. The Rand weakened 11% in the first two months of the year, and seasonal data show that the currency has declined against the dollar in March in four of the past five years. That trend is set to continue amid a global risk-asset sell-off sparked by the spread of the coronavirus. To add to the rand’s woes, Moody’s Investors Service described South Africa’s fiscal risks as “elevated,” raising concern the country is heading for a downgrade to junk. The rand weakened to R15.79 to the dollar before paring the decline to trade at 15.61 by the close on Friday.  That’s its weakest on a closing basis since May 2016.
