Covid-19: Discovery gives SA free doctors for all; Africa asks for debt relief; SA banks downgrade; emerging markets

By Jackie Cameron 

• As the number of confirmed Covid-19 deaths in South Africa registered at five, Discovery’s Adrian Gore and colleagues, and their partners at Vodacom, became the latest to step forward with help in the campaign to help South Africans cope with the pandemic. Gore outlined a “simple, powerful” plan to create easy access to doctors for any South African who fears he or she might have contracted the deadly coronavirus. The move follows announcements by the families of billionaires Patrice Motsepe, Johann Rupert and Mary and Nicky Oppenheimer to each contribute R1bn to efforts to assist businesses. Companies like Naspers have also committed funds to various prongs of the Covid-19 national strategy, offering R500m to the Solidarity Fund and about R1bn to pay for protective equipment for medical personnel and medical supplies. In this podcast with BizNews editor-in-chief Alec Hogg, Gore sets out the details of how the plan to create fast, cost-effective access to doctors will work. For more on how the scheme will work, visit BizNews.com and listen to the interview with Adrian Gore.
• African finance ministers want International Monetary Fund, World Bank and EU support for debt relief amid the coronavirus crisis, Reuters reports. The UN Economic Commission for Africa meeting was co-chaired by South African Finance Minister Tito Mboweni and Ken Ofori-Atta of Ghana, and the ministers met via video conference on Tuesday – many wearing face masks. African countries would like a special purpose vehicle to “deal with all sovereign debt obligations” though no further details were given as to what shape it would take. Africa’s confirmed coronavirus cases had climbed to at least 5,300 by Tuesday, with more than 170 recorded deaths, according to a Reuters tally.
• Two ratings agencies have downgraded big South African banks’ credit ratings to junk. Fitch Ratings and Moody’s said late on Monday they had downgraded South African lenders’ ratings, meaning the lenders are no longer considered investment-grade and they risk further downgrades if the situation worsens. The agencies told Reuters that Standard Bank, Absa, FirstRand, Nedbank and, in the case of Moody’s, Investec’s fortunes were tied to the deteriorating economy in South Africa, already in trouble prior to the outbreak of coronavirus, and those of the government.
• Developing-nation assets kicked off the second quarter on a negative note on Wednesday as stocks from India, South Korea and Colombia slid, currencies declined and the risk premium on bonds rose, reports Bloomberg. “Emerging markets have just taken a first-quarter battering. The fear on Wall Street is that it may hardly compare with what’s coming. While the advanced economies have gone into lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19, triggering market turmoil of a kind unseen in generations, the world’s developing nations have yet to experience the full effects, both economic and humanitarian, of the pandemic,” said the news service. “Some of the world’s foremost investors and strategists, from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Franklin Templeton, are telling clients to hold off on bargain hunting. They’re worried the coronavirus could devastate nations such as India, South Africa and Brazil, where infections are only now starting to gather pace.” Markets are discounting a catastrophic recession accompanied by massive defaults, Ricardo Hausmann, an economist at Harvard University, is quoted as saying.