Business mood shakes off more growth blues

THE Sacci business confidence index dropped 2.2 index points in February to 95.5 from 97.7 in January but was 2.8 points higher than in February last year — the third consecutive month it has improved compared with a year earlier.

AFRICAN Rainbow Minerals said interim headline earnings per share were expected to have risen 272%-288% against the previous comparable halfyear, boosted by an increase in average dollar prices for most of the commodities it produces.

SOUTH Africa’s bulk export volumes surged by 18.6% year on year in February to 14.9 million tons after falling by 6.5% year on year in January to 13.5 million tons, data from the Transnet National Ports Authority showed.

PHARMACEUTICALS group Ascendis Health announced its latest acquisitions, saying it would pay up to à49.1million (about R690-million) for Cyprus’s NHP Natural Health Pharma and à16.35-million for Romania’s Sunwave Pharma.

SOUTH Africa’s economy shrank in the fourth quarter, rounding out a year of mostly poor growth. GDP contracted 0.3% compared with the previous quarter, Stats SA said. That brought growth for the year to 0.3% compared with 2015.

TRACTOR sales, regarded as a proxy for business confidence in the agriculture sector, were 7.7% lower in February than a year earlier at 675 units, the South African Agricultural Machinery Association said.

SANLAM suffered a 6% drop in full-year normalised headline earnings to R8.4-billion, let down by the significant decline in net investment returns, which was compounded by a stronger rand.

AFTER 12 years among the world’s best, the MBA offered by the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business has fallen off the 2017 London Financial Times Top 100 ranking of full-time programmes.