Tag: economic recovery

The operating environment during the first half of the year was challenging. Uncertainty around US policies, especially tariffs and ongoing geopolitical conflicts, caused significant volatility in financial markets. These factors also reduced business confidence.

South Africa’s major banks maintained steady growth in 2024 despite a challenging operating climate and macroeconomic uncertainties. Combined headline earnings grew by 5.9%, reaching R119 billion. This surpassed FY23 results. The combined ROE stood at 17.5% (FY23: 17.6%). The net interest margin was 451 bps (FY23: 459 bps). The credit loss ratio improved to 89 bps (FY23: 102 bps).

South Africa continues to grapple with high unemployment. Businesses must embrace data-driven hiring practices to make informed decisions. This is crucial to secure top talent.

With entrepreneurship critical to SA’s economic recovery, there are resources to help aspiring entrepreneurs get ahead. Entrepreneurship has been hailed as the key to South Africa’s economic recovery – and the good news is that all signs point to it being on the rise.

South Africa continues to produce skilled professionals equipped with the means to drive the South African economy. However, in the older age groups, the number of graduate professionals committed to a career in South Africa is diminishing.

South Africa’s Minister of Finance, Mr. Enoch Godongwana, delivered his maiden National Budget Speech to the National Assembly on Wednesday, 23 February 2022. A crucial function of the Budget Speech is to provide details of spending and make proposals about how the priorities outlined in the President’s State of the Nation Address will be funded.

A few weeks into 2022, an underlying investment theme started to emerge, that of a continued, broad-based recovery with strong economic performance across the globe. Evidence of this recovery was noted in the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) January 2022 statement.

Chief Economists from in a variety of countries globally released the Global Economic Outlook paper this week which provides detailed insights into the global obstacles and opportunities. Surprisingly, while the pandemic may not be over, the major economies are shifting their mindset and focusing increasingly on the potential risks and rewards of a more sustainable long-term recovery and route to sustainable growth.

While we acknowledge the positive structural reforms currently underway by government – most notably the lifting of the self-generation threshold to 100MW – command control plans of enforced localisation stand to undo any potential positive upsides of other reforms.

‘When one door closes, another one opens,’ as the saying goes, and this is particularly true when it comes to investments. Economic recovery is on the horizon, and while it is expected and somewhat priced in by present market activity, investors are more interested in looking at what lies ahead. And here there may be some opportunities.