Tag: mass vaccination

Following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA), we have released an analysis of the speech. SA has registered 3.6 million cases of COVID-19 and just over 96,000 deaths to date.

If businesses have learned one thing during the pandemic it is that resilience, rather than being a tactic to respond to crisis, is a discipline cultivated over time. Today, to not have a digital strategy is to not have a strategy. To build resilience at work, organisations need to start thinking about virtual and remote models, provision of tools that enable collaboration from anywhere, and strategies to look after their peoples’ mental health and wellbeing.

One year after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, CEOs are voicing record levels of optimism in the global economic recovery, with 76% of global business leaders predicting that economic growth will improve in 2021. Coming off of a global recession (3.5% decline in world GDP) and a GDP contraction of 7% in SA, a record share of CEOs are optimistic about global economic growth this year.

Without rapid immunisation, many experts believe that South Africa will experience a third wave of COVID-19 by the coming autumn or winter. Although there is no clear-cut definition of what could constitute this surge it will become evident as we start to observe a continuous rise in new cases. 

Global financial markets whipsawed in 2020 in reaction to a devastating COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent decisions taken by governments and policymakers to protect citizens and keep economies afloat. Higher levels of uncertainty were reflected in the initial spike in the CBOE Volatility Index (Vix) in March 2020 before unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus calmed markets during the year. 

On Christmas Eve, more than four years after voting to leave the European Union and one week before the end of the ‘transition’ phase, the UK and European Commission agreed the terms of their new trading relationship. The tariff and quota-free deal sets the stage for the UK to plot a recovery from its pandemic-induced recession, its deepest in more than 300 years.