Hits & Misses

Cape’s water dries up but welcome ’rain’ falls for SA retail sector

RETAIL sales jumped in November by their biggest margin in more than five years as sales in clothing, footwear and furniture rose. Retail sales rose 8.2% year on year and by 4% on a monthly basis. The year-on-year figure was the largest jump since June 2012.

THE Reserve Bank named the first woman to its monetary policy committee in more than three years, bringing the rates-setting panel to seven members. Fundi Tshazibana will become an adviser to governor Lesetja Kganyago and his three deputies from February 19, the central bank said.

BACKED by former FNB CEO Michael Jordaan, Bank Zero looks set to become South Africa’s newest mutual bank and will be 45% blackowned. Co-founded by Jordaan and former FNB executive Yatin Narsai, Bank Zero has been granted a provisional licence after a “rigorous evaluation” by the Reserve Bank, the bank said in a statement on its website.

CAPE Town could run out of water by April as its worst drought in a century risks forcing residents to join queues for emergency rations. “Day Zero” — the date taps are due to run dry — has crept forward to April 21 as city authorities race to build desalination plants and drill new boreholes.

WOOLWORTHS announced that earnings per share for the 26 weeks to December were expected to be 20% lower than in the matching period in 2016. Headline earnings per share were expected to fall as much as 17.5% to 200.1c- 212.3c, down from 242.6c.

MASSMART expects to report low, single-digit sales growth in the year to end-December, pointing to South

Africa’s tough trading environment. The retailer has also had to contend with a stronger rand, which negatively affected revenue from other countries on the African continent, where the company has a large footprint.