Thursday January 6, 2011

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Brad Dubbelman

Making headlines:

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced that some 67,8% of matrics passed last year's exams – up from 60,7% in 2009. She described the pass rate as a "remarkable achievement" and said that it was possible that the 2010 public sector strike might have robbed the department of its targeted 70% pass rate. There were 643 546 candidates who sat for the exams of whom 537 543 wrote all seven subjects. Of those, 23,5% obtained university entrance, up from 19,9%. There were 18 schools where no pupils passed and 504 schools that achieved a 100% pass rate.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick says that free markets rather than protectionist policies are the solution to volatile food prices and the Group of 20 (G20) should take steps to prioritise the provision of food for the poor. "The answer to food price volatility is not to prosecute or block markets, but to use them better," Zoellick wrote in an opinion piece in Thursday's Financial Times urging G20 leaders to put access to food at the top of its agenda. He added that "By empowering the poor, the G20 can take practical steps towards ensuring the availability of nutritious food."
Food prices hit a record high last month, outstripping levels that prompted riots in 2008 and key grains could climb even further as weather patterns give cause for concern, the United Nation's food agency said.

Investec analyst Annabel Bishop said that interest rates would likely remain unchanged in 2011, with a slight possibility of one more cut in rates at best. South Africa's repo rate is at a historical low of 5,5%, while the consumer price index (CPI) sits at around 3,6%. Bishop said that the general expectation was that CPI inflation would not breach the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) target range of between 3% and 6% in 2011, but would instead average close to 4,5% year on year, running up to 5% in 2012. This was more or less in line with an earlier prediction by SARB governor Gill Marcus’s prediction of 4,3% year on year and an acceleration to 4,8% in 2012.

Also making headlines:

The US will help south Sudan set up as an independent country if voters opt to secede in Sunday's referendum and is pleased with the cooperation from Khartoum, US officials said.
Well-planned, permanent expenditure cuts were highlighted by the International Monetary Fund as the most effective fiscal adjustment for Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, in light of the global financial crisis which shrank the shared Southern African Customs Union revenue pool.
And, thousands of armed police and soldiers have been drafted into Nigeria's oil-producing Delta state for a governorship election seen as a litmus test for the conduct of nationwide polls in April.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.