PANDEMIC PUSHBACK

Once again, the Reserve Bank has left the price of money (the Repo Rate) unchanged at 3.5%. But they did also try to show that they are alert and watching by reducing their prediction of the amount of economic growth the nation will experience in the first three months of 2021 (yes, the quarter with 5 days to go!). It will be a thin 0.2% and not the roaring 1.0% they forecast earlier. The need to publish forecasts as meaningless as this is the fault of deadlines and schedules. If one doesn’t have a snappy answer to the journalist’s questions, then one falls from the survey and pretty soon you are forgotten! The true economic story is that the government’s reaction to the Covid-19 infection was so extreme that large swathes of private industry have been wiped out while others (including naturally the civil service) have survived. In some unexpected areas the recovery has been miraculous. It is likely that the historical legacy economic sectoral divisions and identities are no longer fit for purpose, and issues such as working from home and virtual meetings have totally reshaped the economic landscape and rendered the already dubious data gathering process incapable of probing fine details. Is it honestly unproductive to lie on the couch and think? And then there was the unwarranted and lethal prohibition on the sale of smokes and booze which clinically diverted tax revenues into crime proceeds for large portions of the year. This hammered conventional statistics of consumer spending into oblivion. And if rumours are to be believed, further banning may happen over the coming Easter period for no other reason than it is a demonstration of power. The pandemic has yielded some strange science but none that links Christian holidays with virus transmissibility. The story that a foreign manufacturer of vaccinations requires that a government buying their drug must have in place a no-fault compensation mechanism to cover “the unlikely but potential adverse effects” that the jab might have, is rather an eye-opener. Does our government have similar agreements for everything we import? This story surfaced because our government hasn’t yet arranged the mechanism. Probably because they don’t have the money; or even worse because they did, but it has gone missing. This apparent deliberate blocking of the Suez Canal by the pilot of a super large container vessel shows how easy it can be to disrupt the world in a big way and claim infamy. Shortly before solidly plunging the bows of the good ship “Ever Given” into the bank of the canal, this helmsman managed to take a course that has for all time drawn out a lewd picture on the vessel-tracking charts. Already there is a noticeable rise in traffic around the Cape of Good Hope and your scribe – the unofficial, unappointed, unpaid acting deputy harbour master of Durban – has cleaned his binoculars. The governing party is holding a shindig and chinwag session this weekend. Invariably there will be some alarming and threatening time and money-wasting ideas floated and discussed. New T-shirts with their own quirky spelling mistakes will be distributed. Demands will be tabled and ignored. And Coke and KFC will be served. The Zondo commission seems to have exposed some raw nerve endings and lawyers have been lecturing each other about appropriate behaviour. Which would be amusing if it wasn’t quite so worrisome. The fact, however, remains that no one is culpable of anything so really bad that anyone will actually be prosecuted. There are so many new teams and names in this season’s F1 that not only will it be hard for some of us to remember who is driving what, but the podium could see some new faces. Talking of which the current world champion has adopted a new mien which is moody, philosophical and morally guided. The pictures of Lewis depict a brooding troubled soul. Not really what one expects from this adrenaline-soaked sport. With relatives resident on the Pembroke peninsular and the world’s most beautiful granddaughter living in Edinburgh, tonight’s Six-Nations finale is easy to call. And anyway, the French are just too young, cocky and good. James Greener Friday 26th March 2021