“We don't want them to lose their land for a second time.”

About 100 factory workers from Roelcor Meat Packers in Malmesbury are holding a sleep-in at the factory.

FedEx Corporation reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit on Wednesday as it cut costs.

US stocks fell more than one percent on Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s comments on stimulus measures.

Oil prices slipped in Asia on Thursday after Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke signalled the US central bank would wind down its stimulus programme later this year.

The government is working on a plan that would help prevent redistributed land being used as collateral by banks, says Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti.

South Africans producing and selling realistic baby dolls for thousands of rand are reportedly battling to keep up with demand for their wares.

Zimbabwe needs to explore new global markets with a view to diversifying from its heavy reliance on South Africa, a study has shown.

The Progressive Women’s Movement of SA has urged the government to ensure land reform programmes were consistently monitored to guarantee women as beneficiaries.

Higher global demand for exports has unexpectedly shrunk the current account deficit in the first quarter, a trend that could continue if the rand remains weak.

During President Jacob Zuma’s question time yesterday, DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko said it was clear that labour unrest “is a major cause of [loss of] investor confidence in our economy”.

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During President Jacob Zuma’s question time yesterday, DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko said it was clear that labour unrest “is a major cause of [loss of] investor confidence in our economy”.

Economists at the Japanese bank Nomura had warned that 145 000 jobs and 60 percent of South Africa’s platinum output could be at risk in coming years amid labour unrest in the sector.

She said there was a sore need for clear leadership, policy stability and immediate reform of the labour relations market.

Zuma responded: “There is leadership in this country, very clear leadership. There is certainty on policy. I would not accept the fact that there is no certainty.”

He said economists traditionally had different views and they were entitled to these.

Earlier responding to a question from the IFP’s finance spokesman, Narend Singh, the president argued that there had been a recent dip in investment by outsiders because they had begun “to spread their investments” to other destinations in Africa. This would turn around the flow of millions of exiles escaping problems in their own lands and encourage them to go back to their countries.

Zuma also dismissed Singh’s suggestion that there should be a more liberalist approach to the market and labour legislation. “A more liberal approach to product markets would not have avoided these negative developments [in the mining sector].”

While the government was working with the mining sector to resolve the current problems, it was important to note that the World Economic Forum global competitiveness report for 2012/13 still ranked South Africa 32nd out of 144 countries in terms of market efficiency.

It seems that the impact of labour unrest and reduced investment should never be exaggerated.

Estina

Cope MP Alfred Kganare suggested it was “unfortunate” that when the name of the Gupta family was mentioned the president’s name popped up. But he had to ask President Jacob Zuma whether he had ordered the Treasury to investigate the leasing by a company linked to the Guptas of a massive farm in the Free State effectively “for nothing”.

On top of that, a newspaper story claimed that they would “get R500 million to run the farm. On top of that, they have the right to use the farm to [garner] loans.”

Kganare noted that as far as he was aware the Gupta family were not included in any way with the category of people who were recognised as “previously disadvantaged”.

The Mail & Guardian recently reported that a dairy farm in the Vrede district was part of a public-private partnership with Estina, a South African-registered company. While Estina denied links to the Guptas, the newspaper reported, it did say it had given a sub-contract to a company owned by the family. Atul Gupta, a friend of Zuma, had been involved in negotiations to buy a home in Vrede for the dairy project’s co-ordinator.

The newspaper reported that the Guptas, who were also friendly with Free State Premier Ace Magashule and employed his son, had played an active behind-the-scenes role in the dairy project.

The Phumelela local municipality apparently ceded the Krynaauwslust farm to the province last December. The provincial Agriculture Department then handed Estina a 99-year rent-free lease, it was reported. Zuma said: “My name is dropped everywhere, whoever does something. I can tell you even if there is a car accident… the Zuma name emerges. It is always there.”

But the president asked the opposition MP to bring forward the facts. “We can ask people to investigate… If there was something wrong done, provide the information.”

Competition

Breakfast has become “the” meal of the day, as consumers choose to have it any time of the day and the quick-service restaurants are jumping on the band-wagon. Two days ago, one of the world’s biggest global food service retailers, McDonald’s, expanded its “Breakfast After Midnight” menu outside of its testing regions.

Chris Morran at The Consumerist news website said this brought the restaurant chain closer to a 24-hour breakfast offer.

Locally, fast-food service retailers such as Famous Brands, KFC, News Café and Spur are fighting it out on their breakfast offers. Famous Brands, being the leader in the breakfast offering, believes consumers are now much happier with breakfast at any time of the day and have cut back on their evening meals.

A retail analyst from Absa Investments, Chris Gilmour, said yesterday that Famous Brands’ Wimpy breakfast was legendary. However, Gilmour believed that everyone was reaping the benefits of this “new meal” offering.

McDonald’s was testing its “Breakfast After Midnight” offer in other parts of the world, as well as in South Africa. In March this year, McDonald’s launched a National Breakfast Day, joining about 6 000 other McDonald’s restaurants in Asia and the Middle East.

On that day, more than 6 million eggs were cracked in 16 different regions for the launch of the Egg McMuffin offering. About 177 000 South Africans took part in the free Egg McMuffin offering by McDonald’s.

Famous Brands’ observations have also shown that South Africans are ordering this meal for convenience and for its easy accessibility.

KFC has also jumped in – in 2011 it opened its outlets from 6am to offer breakfast until 10am, with items such as French toast fingers, oats and muesli and items with fresh eggs.

Gilmour said the price factor was one of the most important things in the business. Most of the breakfast offerings from local food service retailers ranged from R9.90 to R30, making it reasonably cheaper than a sit-down dinner meal. page 19

Edited by Peter DeIonno. With contributions from Donwald Pressly and Nompumelelo Magwaza.

Agang, which will be officially launched as a political party in Pretoria this weekend by former World Bank managing director Mamphela Ramphele, has provided little meat about its economic policies – but that may be a strategic decision.

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Agang, which will be officially launched as a political party in Pretoria this weekend by former World Bank managing director Mamphela Ramphele, has provided little meat about its economic policies – but that may be a strategic decision.

However, Ramphele, who told the Cape Town Press Club yesterday that South Africa was at “a crossroads”, was pressed on whether her economic policies would move in the opposite direction to those of the ANC.

Would Agang scale back government intervention in key sectors of the economy? Her response was: “If you have a government that cannot deliver textbooks, how can they run a mining company?”

She said the non-delivery of textbooks, in her home province of Limpopo, was not the only evidence that greater state involvement in the economy was counterproductive to economic and job growth.

“There is very little evidence of success by any government that gets involved in that level of detail (in the economy). Governments are supposed to regulate and create a climate for business, which knows best how to grow companies and generate wealth. Governments have a completely different function.”

Structural bottlenecks in the economy needed to be sorted out. The problem with the mining sector was that it was based “on a 19th-century model”.

Mining was taking place at tremendous depths. “Our mining is uncompetitive compared to other jurisdictions.”

The question that had to be asked, she said, was why South Africa had been “the worst performer” during the commodity boom before the market tapered off during the recent recession.

Ramphele said the matter of mechanising the mines was of key importance.

One member of the audience suggested that would not go down well with unions.

Her answer was, a little extraordinarily, that the focus had to be on the future and this could only be achieved by tackling the tough issues.

One suspects that this is going to be the hard-sell approach for her new party.

Foreign outflows

Foreigners sold a net R3.8 billion worth of South African bonds last week, according to data from Citi.

The purchase of a net R501 million of JSE-listed shares hardly dented the losses, with total portfolio outflows equal to a net R3.3bn.

The bond and equity tally for the month so far is a net outflow of R2.5bn.

The Treasury’s weekly bond auction did not go well yesterday, according to Coronation Fund Managers’ Mark le Roux.

It did not go as badly as last week when the Treasury had to pay over the odds for its longest dated bond as the yield rose 18 basis points.

Le Roux said bond yields had increased about 10 basis points after yesterday’s auction.

Emerging markets have not been doing well of late after several years in which they were the beneficiary of the carry trade – the practice of borrowing in low-interest currencies and investing in high yielding currencies like the rand.

The swing is mainly due to changed perceptions about the outlook for the US economy and a re-evaluation of the relative risks and rewards of investing in US bonds compared with those of emerging markets.

But some emerging markets have their own problems. In South Africa, industrial relations, particularly in mining, are striking the wrong note. Turkey has been coping with often violent protests and now Brazil is following suit.

The BBC reported yesterday that an estimated 200 000 people marched through the streets of Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, protesting over rising public transport costs and the expense of staging the 2014 soccer World Cup.

Specific domestic factors will probably be overshadowed later today by the outcome of the meeting of the US Federal Open Market Committee.

If comments from US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke are correct, he will soon implement an exit strategy – that is, reduce the amount of liquidity the Fed has been pumping in to financial markets.

This means the rand will take another knock.

Edited by Banele Ginindza. With contributions by Donwald Pressly and Ethel Hazelhurst.

China has adopted a policy of pay now, fly later. Even before the financial crisis, the country’s leaders had realised the inflationary dangers of growth in double digits.

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China has adopted a policy of pay now, fly later. Even before the financial crisis, the country’s leaders had realised the inflationary dangers of growth in double digits. But, in recent times, negative spin-offs have emerged from the type of growth that boosted China to the position of the second-largest economy.

For decades, the economy was driven by government investment and exports. However, the collapse of demand from a large part of the world over the past five years has revealed the flaws in that model. China can no longer rely on export demand for its manufactured goods to boost its gross domestic product, and policymakers are attempting to stimulate domestic demand. The change of focus should bring more sustainable growth. But the policy measures could temporarily slow the pace of growth.

Barclays believes that the new premier, Li Keqiang, is targeting growth below this week’s downwardly revised forecast by the World Bank. The bank lowered its projection for the year to 7.7 percent from 8.4 percent previously.

Barclays has adjusted its own forecast from 7.9 percent to 7.4 percent. And it suggests in a recent note that Li has lowered his target to 7 percent from 7.5 percent.

“His recent speeches highlighted the challenges for China to reach the 7 percent target in this decade and the need to accelerate structural reforms to unleash growth potential. As reforms [such as interest rate liberalisation] could lower growth in the near term, before the benefits show up gradually.”

China has been the main driver of global growth post recession. In the period it has become the largest market for South African exports, almost entirely commodity exports. Not only will demand growth slacken, but prices of commodities – South Africa’s main exports – will be subdued.

Electricity

Eskom warned yesterday that it would have to draw on emergency power as peak demand was expected to exceed supply for the first time since January last year. Vodacom swiftly issued a statement encouraging the use of smart-meters.

Smart meters record consumption of electricity in intervals of an hour or less and send the data back to the power utility for effective monitoring and billing. But smart meters differ from conventional automatic meter reading and enable two-way communication with the meter.

The company said smart metering could help “restrict load shedding”, a bane of a growing society, including potential “electricity supply constraints”.

Vodacom Business deployed more than 3 000 smart meters to its sites and had realised savings, South Africa’s largest cellular network operator said.

Vuyani Jarana, the head of Vodacom Business, even touted the use of smart meters to help with “fraud detection, predict maintenance requirement and to lead smart grids which respond intelligently to variations in supply and demand”.

What Vodacom’s statement largely displayed, was how one man’s poison could be another’s meat, as Vodacom used the opportunity to market its global data service platform for its machine-to-machine communications. Smart meters are a part of machine-to-machine communication.

With this platform, users can control SIM-enabled devices remotely from anywhere in the world and utilities can manage costs and the complexities of deploying large volumes of SIM cards through the lifecycle of deployment. Consumers would also be able to monitor energy consumption, according to Vodacom. But the system smacks of half empowerment as the true engagers with the box is the utility, while the consumer waited patiently to receive a bill at the appointed time.

Budget

Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus became the centre of attention in the presidency’s budget vote in Parliament this week. President Jacob Zuma, responding to DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko, said “some opposition speakers” used a statement by the governor “selectively to suit their own ends”.

Last week the governor delivered what commentators described as “her strongest warning yet” to government that “decisive leadership” was needed to tackle South Africa’s domestic challenges. She remarked that they had reached “crisis proportions”. There was the suggestion that government wasn’t doing enough to counter the fall in confidence, which has seen some investors exit the bond and equities markets. On Wednesday, Mazibuko simply repeated the governor’s comments, but Zuma didn’t appreciate that.

During the debate, Mazibuko tore into Zuma, saying he played a large part in the fall in confidence and the freefall of the currency. Describing Zuma’s leadership as “a failed presidency”, she said two weeks ago at a special press conference, Zuma had tried to speak up the currency and reassure the global markets about the state of South Africa’s economy. His efforts had backfired spectacularly.

Zuma said at the press conference: “It is only in undemocratic countries that there are no strikes. I don’t think we should take strikes as a problem.” Mazibuko said that within hours, the value of the rand had “breached the R10 to one US dollar mark”. It had lost 1.5 percent against the dollar within hours of Zuma’s intervention.

But Zuma did not see it that way: “Some honourable members of the official opposition have even distorted the reasons for the depreciation of the rand, probably as part of the agenda to continuously portray the country as failing.”

The fact was the markets were “very volatile on the day of the media briefing on the economy… traders responded to news from the US on quantitative easing. This led to the strengthening of the dollar… thus the rand’s weakness is a natural consequence of lower commodity prices and a surging dollar”. It must be Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s fault then.

Edited by Peter DeIonno. With contributions from Ethel Hazelhurst, Asha Speckman and Donwald Pressly.

South Africa may have fared worse than its peers but its woes are part of a broader global picture.

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South Africa may have fared worse than its peers but its woes are part of a broader global picture. CNNMoney reported yesterday that the MSCI emerging market stock index had lost 10 percent over the past month. It said the flight accelerated on Tuesday when the Bank of Japan failed to ease monetary policy further

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South Africa suffered big losses that day as non-residents sold a net R1.6 billion worth of local bonds and shares. In the month to date R3.6bn in combined portfolio investment has flowed out of the country. Also on Tuesday, the National Treasury had to pay a higher-than-expected price to raise funds at its bond auction.

The outflows from emerging markets started as expectations rose that the US Federal Reserve would soon cut back on quantitative easing. A more normal monetary environment will change the investment ball game as institutions will no longer be obliged to take extra risks to earn worthwhile returns.

Analysts quoted by CNN said that emerging markets had also been hit by the weakness in commodity prices and domestic political issues.

But another spectre looms.

ETX Capital market strategist Ishaq Siddiqi said yesterday that Greece’s debt drama could be rearing its ugly head again after several weeks of relative calm on the euro zone debt front. He spoke of speculation that the Greek government had called an emergency cabinet meeting and that Prime Minister George Papandreou might have to stand a vote of confidence. This sparked a sell-off in European markets.

“This follows the closure of Greek state TV at midnight on Tuesday as part of an austerity measure to comply with the EU’s privatisation mandate,” Siddiqi said.

He noted that the country had also failed to garner foreign interest to dispose of big ticket state-owned gas monopoly Depa on Monday.

As each day brings a new threat, it’s hard for economists to see the future.

World Bank

Risks from advanced economies have eased and growth is firming despite ongoing contraction in the euro zone, according to a World Bank report released yesterday.

But the Global Economic Prospects report notes that the pick-up in developing markets will be modest because of capacity constraints in several middle-income countries including South Africa, Brazil, India, Russia and Turkey.

The lender of last resort says it expects the economy of sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa, to grow 4.9 percent this year; south Asia 5.2 percent; the east Asia and Pacific region 7.3 percent; Europe and central Asia 2.8 percent; Latin America and the Caribbean 3.3 percent; and the Middle East and north Africa 2.5 percent. South Africa’s economy is expected to grow 2.5 percent this year, advancing to 3.2 percent next year.

The report says growth in Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa, members of the Brics bloc alongside China, has been between 2 and 3.5 percentage points slower since 2010 than it was during the pre-crisis boom period of 2003 to 2007.

The World Bank says while different elements have been at play in each of these middle-income countries, there are several common factors.

Growth during the boom period was much stronger than during the preceding four years or even 10 years. Many began to think these higher pre-crisis growth rates might be consistent with potential output growth, a view that the strong bounce-back of growth in the period immediately following the crisis seemed to confirm. However, countries have had difficulty sustaining such rapid growth without generating goods or asset price pressures.

The bank says weak post-crisis growth in several of these countries has not generated significant spare capacity.

Edited by Peter DeIonno. With contributions from Ethel Hazelhurst and Wiseman Khuzwayo.

It has become common for listed construction companies, when providing progress reports on their interaction with the Competition Commission on the fast-track settlement process, to refer to “historical” anti-competitive practices.

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It has become common for listed construction companies, when providing progress reports on their interaction with the Competition Commission on the fast-track settlement process, to refer to “historical” anti-competitive practices.

The use of the word “historical” does not appear to be a coincidence but an attempt by the current senior executives and managers of these listed companies to distance themselves from the collusion, bid-rigging and price-fixing that occurred. Reference is also made to the involvement of unnamed directors and senior executives who have retired or moved on. This might be true in some instances but some of the offences relate to 2010 World Cup projects, not exactly “historical”.

When suggestions of wrongdoing in the sector first surfaced, several chief executives swore blind at results presentations that their companies were clean. Companies have tried to deflect blame from the current senior executives.

The current management of most of the sector did not voluntarily confess to past sins. They had to be enticed by a sweetener offered by the Competition Commission in the form of lower penalties.

But it is impossible that nobody who is now employed in these companies was involved in these “historical” anti-competitive practices. That much should be clear from the commission’s confirmation in 2011, when it launched the fast-track settlement process after its initial investigation into 65 bid-rigging cases involving more than 70 projects worth R29 billion, that its probe had implicated all the major construction firms.

Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel last month confirmed that 18 construction firms, including the six biggest, had admitted to fixing prices and collusion and the commission had identified 300 cases of illegal or irregular behaviour by firms that had won about R47bn in contracts, including those to build stadiums for the World Cup.

Consumers’ platform

If you are someone who takes serious offence to poor customer service or false advertising you probably have been to consumer service website Hellopeter and lashed out at the person and company who upset you only to be amazed by the speedy resolution of the matter.

When I recently changed my motor insurance provider the new insurer encouraged me to rate its services on Hellopeter which shows how much this platform has shaken the world for many businesses.

More consumers are turning to Hellopeter to vent their anger even though there are ombudsmen and other bodies looking out for the consumers’ interests.

I was shocked to see one complaint last week lodged against a legal expense insurance company on Hellopeter. The user was dismayed that the adviser of that legal insurance firm had referred her to Hellopeter about a case he could not resolve.

In its 2012 annual report, the ombudsman for short-term insurance showed it had received 9 123 complaints. The ombudsman’s figures alone tell a sad story about consumer services.

In the 2012 financial year, the ombudsman resolved complaints (to the tune of) R113.7 million in favour of consumers. Some companies had 100 percent overturn rate while others had as much as 37 out of every 1 000 claims referred to the ombudsman. However, more people know how to contact Hellopeter than how to access the services of the ombudsman.

Edited by Peter DeIonno. With contributions from Roy Cokayne and Londiwe Buthelezi.

Key players allegedly involved in 2010 Sars investigations.

In heavy sell-off after Fed move.

Sparked by imminent end to Fed's stimulus programme.

Falls more than 1% in mid-morning trade.

Fed to start QE withdrawal later this year.