Category: Black economic empowerment (BEE)

Anti-business, Anti-poor, Black economic empowerment (BEE), ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Job creation and unemployment, Municipal governance

Decayed economic infrastructure: the Achilles’ Heel of the ANC Government?

Johannes Wessels

As Eskom struggles each day against the odds to keep electricity flowing, readers of on-line publications are treated to a multitude of articles on the SA government’s most effective achievement: the destruction of the country’s economic infrastructure.

A compendium of recent achievements includes:

  • Potholes in South Africa increased from 15 million to 25 million in 5 years.
  • Johannesburg, the economic powerhouse of the country, experience a water crisis: some suburbs were for up to 3 weeks without water supply and the sound of slowly filling toilet cisterns has become a source of joy and celebration. This despite the Vaal Dam being 90% full and the Sterkfontein Dam that feeds Vaal Dam at full capacity.
  • Eskom’s proven unreliability continues with power interruptions due to unplanned maintenance at ageing coal-fired stations, less than capacity generation at the vastly overpriced Medupi and Kusile power stations, as well as insufficient diesel supplies to run the emergency generators.
  • Coal exports through the privately developed and owned Richard’s Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) was in 2021 a mere 58.7 million tons, the lowest since 1996 and far below the design capacity of 91 million tons. The constraints were due to cable theft and the poorly maintained rail tracks of Transnet that resulted in mined coal not reaching the export terminal despite a massive international demand.
  • Despite South African ports efficiency far below the global average and constantly declining, the National Port Authority’s latest report indicate it was unable to implement essential capital expenditure projects, spending less than 50% of the R39.8 billion destined for port improvements.
  • Several of Durban’s previously famous blue flag beaches have been turned into salty sewerage soiled stretches and untreated sewage still flow into the Vaal Dam at Deneysville.
  • Local authorities not maintaining their water distribution networks have lost water to the value of R9.82 billion in a single financial year.
  • The collapse of PRASA’s passenger rail services around the country.

Like a Moses pleading with Pharaoh…

The demise of our economic infrastructure has been long in the making. There were numerous technical reports and warnings by professional bodies and experts that under investment in infrastructure and insufficient maintenance would result in too little electricity generating capacity, heavily polluted rivers and major constraints in logistics.

The SA Institute for Civil Engineering (SAICE) warned in 2006 in their Infrastructure Report Card (IRC) that “whilst South Africa’s built environment infrastructure is very good, even world class in places, the relatively poor overall grade reflects extensive maintenance and refurbishment backlogs, caused primarily by funding and skills shortages.”  The following SAICE IRCs of 2011 and 2017 conveyed the same message, but the tone got shriller: “the below average grade reflects the continuing low maintenance levels and even neglect in many areas. A lack of commitment to long term planning, adequate dedicated funding, proper management systems, data collection and skill deployment are major contributing factors…”

The government and senior officials, however, turned a deaf ear again. But this can be their Achilles’ Heel.

Continue reading “Decayed economic infrastructure: the Achilles’ Heel of the ANC Government?” →
Anti-business, Black economic empowerment (BEE), Black-owned businesses, Central planning, Corruption, Crime against business, Developmental state, Economic freedom, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Inequality, Job creation and unemployment, Lockdown, Market economy, Preferential procurement, Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMMEs), State Owned Enterprises (SOEs)

CR’s mask fell off: lives are less important than empowerment

Johannes Wessels
@johannesEOSA1

There is an increasingly high risk that South Africa will not by 2025 have recovered to its pre-lockdown levels of GDP. In a research report – Vaccines and re-opening: Covid-19 risks to the 2021 recovery – HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world, indicates that South Africa will not recover as quickly as most of the emerging markets.

HSBC places South Africa in a cluster of countries that will not by end 2022 regain their pre-Covid GDP levels. This list also includes France, Italy, Spain, the UK, Mexico and Argentina. According to HSBC’s estimates the rest of the Eurozone will have recovered by end 2022, with Germany reaching that target by the first quarter of 2022.

SA on the bus to Argentina

Continue reading “CR’s mask fell off: lives are less important than empowerment” →
Anti-business, Black economic empowerment (BEE), Buying local, Company tax, Competitiveness, Developmental state, Economic freedom, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, Enterprise friendly environment, Enterprise profitability, Entrepreneurial space, Export-led growth, Expropriation without compensation, Informal businesses, Job creation and unemployment, Large enterprises, Medium sized enterprises, Preferential procurement, Property rights, Registered companies / Incorporated businesses, Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Small enterprises, Small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMMEs), SME, State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), White monopoly capital theory

Loan guarantee scheme overwhelmingly inadequate: cut VAT & CIT to help SMEs

Johannes Wessels
@johannesEOSA1

The centrepiece of the Ramaphosa government’s recovery and economic resuscitation scheme – the loan guarantee fund – is as helpful as giving a desperately hungry infant a dummy, pretending it is food. Not even 5% of formal registered businesses have applied for funding and by end November about 1.8% of these firms have obtained assistance from the scheme.

It is far more affordable to cut Company Income Tax and to raise the VAT threshold to get the economy growing again, than to continue with the current package of the Economic

Why the low interest in the Loan guarantee fund?

On the one hand the enterprise world was pre-lockdown already coping with difficult conditions due to an unfriendly enterprise environment with a president that is on record that he disagreed “with the view that the most effective and efficient way to provide services to our people is through the private sector.”  Many business owners, especially in the case of SMEs, are reluctant to take on more debt in such circumstances, especially when running also the risk that their properties may be confiscated (expropriation without compensation).

On the other hand, the government, being out of pocket and not keen on disbursing billions that it would lose if the beneficiaries cannot service the loans, had asked the banks to apply their own existing loan assessment criteria when evaluating the applications. Were it a Khula or a SEFA process, the money would long ago have disappeared. So, despite utterances of concern about the low and slow disbursement process, the president cannot be surprised or concerned that the banks are circumspect.

In May already, EOSA had spelt out the devastating impact of lockdown measures on the enterprise world , arguing that the systemic damage caused to the spontaneous order of enterprises can best be ameliorated by a systemic response that would enable the spontaneous order to establish its own patterns again.

The government, however, kept its focus on basically two things:

  • Promoting Covid-19 to the highest pedestal of dangers, wilfully ignoring all other existing problems as well as the additional problems the lockdown strategy would create, and
  • Pursuing its social engineering efforts to reshape the South African economy in particular, and society at large, by limiting state relief measures to businesses complying with BEE (effectively throttling white sole proprietor businesses to death), deciding which kind of businesses are essential and which not, and pursuing anti-tobacco and prohibition agendas by bans on cigarette and alcohol sales.
Continue reading “Loan guarantee scheme overwhelmingly inadequate: cut VAT & CIT to help SMEs” →
Black economic empowerment (BEE), Black-owned businesses, Business incubation, Buying local, Central planning, Company tax, Cooperatives, Developmental state, Economic freedom, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Enterprise friendly environment, Enterprise regularities, Enterprise research, data and statistics, Entrepreneurial space, Export-led growth, Job creation and unemployment, Lockdown, National Gazelles Programme, Predictive capabilities, Preferential procurement, Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMMEs), Spontaneous order, State Owned Enterprises (SOEs)

Elastoplast for the knocked-out economy

Johannes Wessels
@johannesEOSA1

Just as a heavy punch on the side of a boxer’s head can disrupt his brain’s neurovascular coupling processes causing him to fall like a log, the lockdown blow had disrupted the intricate flow of funds in the economy. BankServAfrica’s figures for Black Friday confirmed consumers are still on the canvas: turnover declined by a whopping 52% and there was a 30% decline in the number of in-store card transactions.

The pockets of the majority of individuals and a substantial share of businesses now resemble those of the state-owned enterprises.

People are hesitant to spend with unemployment dramatically higher than before lockdown, due to the government turning off the income tap for most enterprises for at least 3 months, declaring them non-essential (in the case of the hospitality sector almost 8 months). The government has thus achieved not only the lengthening of the jobless queues but also driving the rest of the population closer to poverty.

It was a cruel knock-out blow by the government

The religion of the developmental saviour

The subconscious neurovascular coupling process ensures oxygen supply in nano-seconds through blood flow to the brain segments most active at that split second. A boxer can recover from a knock-out if there was no rupture of arteries and quick restoration of normal flow of blood in the brain. If not, there can be permanent brain damage, even death.

Our thought processes depend on continuous uninterrupted subconscious processes. Likewise, an economy depends on the continuous uninterrupted flow of funds that is totally unregulated in the sense that no entity controls or directs the trillions of individual transactions by billions of consumers (both individuals and enterprises) buying their daily requirements and selling their products and services, either worldwide, or at a lower scale in different countries.

The Bleak Friday data indicates the government’s lockdown punch caused chronically reduced demand.

Continue reading “Elastoplast for the knocked-out economy” →
Anti-business, Black economic empowerment (BEE), Black-owned businesses, Buying local, Central planning, Economic freedom, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Entrepreneurial space, Job creation and unemployment, Lockdown, Market economy, Marxist-Leninist ideology, Opportunity tax, Preferential procurement, Township enterprises

Ramaphosa’s bold plan (1): Is ‘buying local’ BEE disguised by a face mask?

Johannes Wessels
@johannesEOSA1

If Ramaphosa’s bold plan to restart the economy was a film, the premiere already proved it’s not an ‘out-of-the-box’ blockbuster that will rake in Oscars for economic growth and sustainable job creation. Growth through state-led infrastructure development XXI is a lame sequel fit for an infamous Razzie award.

Like its predecessor – the lengthy National Development Plan – the Economic Reconstruction & Recovery Plan (ERRP) is a sure box office flop.

The ERRP announced by the president after lengthy consultation processes with big business and big labour states “Non-implementation of the ERRP could lead to loss of economic capacity, including collapse of the supply capacity, consumer and business confidence, the labour market and increased vulnerability of the poor. The overall plan aims to mitigate these risks”.

This script suggests its authors live in a make-believe reality: South Africans, whether tax payers or the growing number of unemployed, know consumer and business confidence and employment are not waiting for collapse through the non-implementation of a plan. It has collapsed already and was meticulously crafted by the very same government now purporting to be capable of getting the economy firing on all cylinders again.

There is a hidden sub-text as well: Covid 19 was the excuse to gain more arbitrary power and programs to recover from the lockdown devastation are aimed at cementing these arbitrary powers.

Continue reading “Ramaphosa’s bold plan (1): Is ‘buying local’ BEE disguised by a face mask?” →
Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA), Anti-business, Anti-poor, Black economic empowerment (BEE), Black-owned businesses, Business and economic indexes, Competitiveness, Complexity economics, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Emigration/Immigration, Enterprise richness, Expropriation without compensation, Inequality, Investment/Divestment, Job creation and unemployment, Opportunity tax, Preferential procurement, Productive knowledge, Township enterprises, White monopoly capital theory

Skills more important for the economy than splitting fine or frizzy hair: it’s education, not race, that counts

Johannes Wessels (@johannesEOSA1)

A tumult about a shampoo advertisement diverted attention from the biggest economic decline under the ANC government to date. A quarterly GDP figure that confirmed the country is plunging into poverty got less attention than a Clicks advertisement. The deteriorating economy will entrench the country in the bottom half of the Economic Complexity Index (ECI), making it less and less attractive as a destiny for both skills and capital.

Splitting “frizzy and dull” hairs from “fine and flat”, however, is apparently for South Africans far more important than worrying about an additional three million unemployed or thousands of businesses pushed into the abyss of loss and debt. Reading Figure 1 (ECI data) reminds of the typical good-news, bad-news joke: the bad news is that SA has slipped from the top third of countries to the middle third. The good news is that this ranking is far better than where the country is heading for. The ECI, developed by Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard and Cesar Hidalgo of MIT, measures the productive capabilities of large economic systems, whether cities, regions, or countries and is based on the knowledge accumulated in a population that gives expression to the diversity and complexity of economic activities. 

Almost simultaneously with the DA’s embrace of non-racialism as a pillar of their redress strategy that will not use race as a yardstick to address inequality, the 2020 Q2 GDP demolition figure was released. The throttling of the economy by the government’s lockdown strategy made far less ripples than what TREsemmé claims to smoothen out in frizzy hair.

The commentariat treated the DA like TREsemme

It was not only the Twitterati that underplayed the economic news: the same sentiments dominated in serious opinion pieces and radio and TV talk shows. And the commentariat effectively placed the DA in the same box as TREsemmé:

  • Carol Paton, editor at large of Business Live, reckons race will matter forever and lamented the DA’s policy removal of race-based redress “since that will affirm suspicions that the DA is a party whose real agenda is to defend white privilege by denying that such privilege exists at all”. 
  • Stephen Grootes, radio presenter and Maverick columnist, echoed that “firm evidence and the lived experience of South Africans” indicate whites are rich and blacks are poor.

A Coalition of the Offended encompassing inter alia Julius Malema, the Daily Maverick, Justice Malala and Twitters’ @BiancavanWyk16 emerged: all deeply shocked and emotionally wounded, found Clicks’ sacking of an executive and suspension of selling TREsemmé insufficient.

Some called for “attacks” on Clicks stores and the malls that provide rental space for Clicks. Others demanded a sort of #BlackHairMatters kneeling, some were just happy to find something to be unhappy about and some considered the actions of others in the coalition either overboard or underwhelming.

Whilst one can understand that the EFF, the ANC and a plethora of beneficiaries or wannabe-beneficiaries of BEE, are obsessed with affirmative action, expropriation without compensation and preferential procurement mechanisms enabling hiked prices, it remains amazing that leading commentators such as Paton and Grootes ignore the hard evidence that race is not the best proxy for measuring inequality and that the application of race fails to target those really at the bottom of the pit. 

Way back, Census 2011 already provided evidence that education is a far more reliable marker.

Race as a marker for household income inequality weighed and found wanting

Continue reading “Skills more important for the economy than splitting fine or frizzy hair: it’s education, not race, that counts” →