Hits & Misses

Rail link fixed to Saldanha port while unemployment on the rise

SA’s iron-ore miners have welcomed the earlier-than-expected reopening of their sole link to export markets via the port at Saldanha after Transnet fixed the 860km railway line ahead of schedule. What could have been a month-long shutdown was cut to just nine days, winning rare plaudits from miners in the Northern Cape whose finances rest heavily on Transnet Freight Rail moving iron ore and manganese to the coast.

THREE months of declining mining production was halted in October with surprise annual growth of 0.5%. Economists’ consensus was for a 1.5% decline, continuing September’s slide, which Stats SA revised to 2% from 1.8%.

ELON Musk may be about to bring his Tesla electric cars back home. “Probably end of next year,” the Tesla CEO replied to a South African fan on Twitter, who asked him when a store would open in the country of the businessman’s birth. THE number of employed South Africans fell by 16,000 in the third quarter, driven largely by a fall in the number of those employed in the manufacturing, construction and mining sectors, Stats SA said in its quarterly employment survey. In the second quarter, the economy shed 69,000 jobs.

FOUR years after the collapse of African Bank Limited (Abil), only R1.15bn out of a total R9.6bn has been paid to creditors. According to the latest financial statements for Residual Debt Services, the “bad bank” that emerged from the split of Abil, R7.8bn will still be outstanding by January 2019 with a chance that some creditors may never be paid.

AS the state continues to bleed billions of rands through corruption in the public sector, a Public Service Commission report shows that the amounts involved rose from R184m in 2015/16 to a whopping R524m the following year.