Tag: Business confidence

We are pleased to share our second South Africa Economic Outlook report for 2023. In the wake of Budget 2023 and announced incentives for investment in solar power generation, this edition focuses on green incentives and their role in encouraging local businesses to invest in renewable electricity generation.

Nearly three quarters (73%) of CEOs believe global economic growth will decline over the next 12 months, according to our 26th Annual Global CEO Survey, which polled 4,410 CEOs in 105 countries and territories in October and November 2022.

Amidst the rising cost of living, interest rate and fuel price hikes, and load shedding, the elephant in the room remains persistently high rates of unemployment. Much fanfare tends to surround any announcement of a small decline in the quarterly unemployment rate as it did at the end of November 2022 when Statistics South Africa revealed that the official unemployment figure had decreased by one percentage point between the second and third quarters of 2022 from 33.9% to 32.9%.

The travel industry was delighted with the announcement that came through during the night and that will ensure some level of normality and confidence in the market that travel is open and easy. It will also certainly help to support the recovery of the sector.

The trouble with forex controls is that they are far more effective at keeping money 'out' than at keeping it 'in'. Almost every historical case shows that forex controls were conceived in shamed and weakened circumstances. In every case they have ultimately proven to be unalloyed failures.

With Black Friday around the corner, most if not all, e-commerce and retailers will have that feeling of anxiousness and dread in the weeks leading up to the day asking:mWill the site or systems stay up? Will it perform under the additional load? and If it goes down how fast can we recover?

The past decade has not been easy for small and medium enterprise (SME) owners. GDP growth has been almost non-existent for most of the past ten years, and despite a widely held – and correct – belief that SMEs hold the keys to job creation and economic growth, they’ve largely been left to fend for themselves.

For a country always in need of cheering up, recent news of better-than-expected economic growth was most welcome. StatsSA data showed that the economy grew by 4.6% after inflation in the first quarter on a seasonally adjusted and annualised basis.

Franchising has at its heart the spirit of entrepreneurship but amidst the COVID-19 pandemic that has resulted in immeasurable destruction of small businesses, the question remains whether the entrepreneurial flame can be re-ignited for future growth.

The South African economy, like many emerging and developing economies, has high levels of poverty. As with many such countries, there are three primary objectives to reducing poverty, unemployment and inequity. These three objectives take precedence over almost all other goals.