Before the economically lethal anti-pandemic measures took effect, the State’s revenue was around R1.3 trillion a year and growing modestly at 5% to 6% per annum. The latest release from National Treasury reveals income now to be more than R1.5 trillion a year, growing at 25%pa. These are staggering numbers and it’s little wonder everyone from Cyril down is doing a little jig and praising the efforts of the taxman. Elsewhere, the team who dish the cash out to the Ministries that spend the stuff, must also be smug. For the first time in living memory, they have throttled back and their average monthly distribution of R1.8 trillion has barely changed in the past 12 months. It’s not all good news though, as the latter number is around R300 billion larger than the first. The technical jargon for this situation is “deficit” and any organisation or individual that has one, needs to borrow to fill the gap. Interest rates are however nudging up everywhere, so borrowing is becoming more expensive. The current deficit is still greater than in pre-pandemic times so National Treasury needs to turn down the music and get back to work. Especially the expenditure team. The revenue windfall is just that.
Apparently the MTN shareholders panicked and sold when this week it was announced that Nigeria was requiring phone companies to link SIM card numbers to user’s ID number. I’m pretty sure we have that link already since one needs an ID number to open any sort of account. Even visiting a friend in a residential complex involves scanning both your driving licence and car registration. As far back as the Kebble murder the police were using cell phone records to track who was where and when. We would each be horrified to discover how much of our lives is on record. And not very secure ones at that. I’m sure Checkers supermarkets have already alerted someone to my apparent addiction to strawberry flavoured yoghurt and my on-line order for litres of the stuff. It was a simple mistake in the shopping app! Honestly!
The search for scare stories about the state of the world has moved off Twitter and is now to be found (or maybe not found) on the supermarket shelves. There are all too real and visible shortages and astronomical price rises in every aisle. The supply chains are visibly awry. A drive round the Durban dock area reveals acres of stacked and mothballed containers awaiting export cargo to ship from SA. The flip side is that this means there are container shortages at the supplier’s end. Reportedly, Chinese ports are even taking shutdown days as manufacturers there battle to move their output. Undoubtedly, it’s all way more complicated than that and the Ukraine debacle is hitting hard and fast. Few of us realised or even knew how many markets that nation dominated. No wonder Putin is all over it. It’s a real mess and western leaders are seemingly more concerned with pronouns, sports competitor gender and toilet door signage to placate miniscule fractions of their populations than to ensure that everyone can find food. Boris’ command of Russian hasn’t helped much yet.
The apparent inability of anyone (especially those on the public payroll) to do their job without first ensuring that there is a place for them at the corruption trough must be this nation’s greatest ill. SA has still not complied with the long-standing international agreement to discontinue broadcasting non-digital TV signals. The delay seems to be bickering about who gets the contract to make and distribute the small piece of kit (set-top box) to those deemed too poor to upgrade to digital TV sets. There’s stream of government money to be tapped right there.
Being the Masters, there’s bound to be a story about those iconic but androgenous baggy white overalls they insist the caddies wear. This year, for some reason, we got lengthy TV coverage of the events of the so-called Par 3 Day where the players’ immediate family join in and get to walk the hallowed grass and swing a club or two, provided they wear one of these overalls. The kids seemed to relish the opportunity to get dressed up, but the carefully groomed significant others, maybe not so much! But my goodness, golfers do breed hey?
James Greener
Friday 8th April 2022
