Tag: food price

One of the outcomes of the latest issue to swap the world – low growth, high interest rates and the threats of recessions – which will remain a driver for the growth of new ways of working and alternative business models for many years to come, is the increasing development of the side gig economy.

South Africans are navigating a protracted period of high interest rates, food and fuel prices, and low economic growth, which is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. The economic environment makes attracting new customers more difficult, forcing businesses to focus on customer retention and growing wallet share.

For banks, disruption has become business as usual. Besides the ever-changing customer expectations, banks are under pressure to defend their market share against increased competition and the digitisation of the financial services landscape by neo-banks and FinTechs.

As countries realise that inflation is linked to the shortfalls of globalisation, the world may see more 'slowbalisation' and 'sticky inflation'. Slowbalisation occurs when countries start diversifying their supply from single to multiple trading partners, and local manufacturers.

People are worrying about a global recession and with good reason. But what if the factors driving rising prices are beyond the limits of policymakers’ control? I discuss what central bankers’ next move might be, what markets are pricing in and what the probability of a recession is.

It’s a new year but the global inflation debate continues to rage. Few things are as important for longer-term market behaviour as inflation; so this is important stuff, but also difficult since the big inflation shifts of the past 60 years (first up, then down, then way down) were largely unexpected.