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Commercial and business Trends Our Rand exchange rate has been quite volatile of late and, aside from the accepted understanding that its value will depreciate against most major currencies, the last Big Mac Index report (before the Rand fell fairly dramatically)...

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Economy and business Trends: Our Rand flattered but deceived: it strengthened but is again weakening on the back of the usual including, surprisingly, a trade deficit. Our S&P PMI is down to its second-lowest level in two years and our manufacturing activity fell...

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Economy and business Trends: The African Development Bank opined that our GDP rate for this year should weaken to 0.2% – the IMF says 0.3%. Yawn. Noteworthy, however, is ADB’s footnote that South Africa is the worst GDP performer in the Southern African region for...

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Economy and business Trends: Our Consumer Confidence Index is at its second lowest level on record. For all practical purposes we are in a technical recession with low growth and high unemployment. Foreign investment in South African bonds is down, as may be seen from...

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Economy / Business Little interesting news is available on our economic front. The following graph gives our expected GDP growth by the IMF: Other than the dismal news above, is the introduction of a new economic index by, of all entities, Bloomberg. So much for the...