Inflation rains on the JSE’s parade

THE Reserve Bank’s leading business cycle indicator increased 0.3% on a month-on-month basis in January, boosted partly by an increase in share prices on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. PLATINUM producer Northam says it has made significant progress in structuring a proposed transaction that will increase its historically disadvantaged South African shareholder level. SCIENCE and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom launched the first antenna of the MeerKAT radio telescope‚ taking South Africa and its international partners a step closer to building the Square Kilometre Array. CONSTRUCTION group Basil Read Holdings returned to profitability in the year to December‚ boosted in part by its renewed focus on core operations. Net profit from continuing operations was R100.5-million‚ from a R196.1million loss the year before. HEADLINE producer inflation quickened to 7.7% year on year in February from 7% in January, Stats SA said. Prices at the factory gate rose 1.3% on a month-on-month basis in February, against 1% previously. HARMONY Gold expects gold production in the March quarter to be 12%-15% lower than in the preceding quarter due in part to production stoppages at Doornkop after an accident last month. SOUTH Africa, which is Africa’s biggest producer of maize, imported yellow maize for the first time in almost two years last week as a government report showed stockpiles fell 37% in February from a year earlier. CIVIL construction confidence‚ as measured by the First National Bank/Bureau for Economic Research civil construction confidence index‚ fell to 55 points in the first quarter this year after rising to 66 points in last year’s fourth quarter.