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Monday, June 8, 2009.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Jonathan Faurie.

Making headlines today:

South Africa's Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has called for nominations of "qualified and experienced nominees" for appointment to the board of the South African Bureau of Standards.

The SABS is responsible for the development and publication of standards for products and services.

The board members will be involved in managing the strategic affairs of the SABS, and for liaising with the SABS executive, industry, and government institutions.

South Africa's central bank Governor Tito Mboweni said that central banks would pursue low inflation regardless of whether they had an inflation target or not.

South Africa's government is under pressure from trade union allies to scrap inflation targets that they say have led to overly tight monetary policy, hurting the poor.

The demand has raised concern among some investors worried about a shift to more leftist economic policy.

Labour federation Cosatu has become increasing vocal in demands for looser fiscal and monetary policy, and unions have threatened strikes if interest rates are not cut more.

They are particularly critical of inflation targeting, which the central bank has loosely followed.

The Reserve Bank targets consumer inflation at between 3 and 6 percent and raised its key repo lending rate by 5 percentage points in the two years until June 2008 to try tame inflation that peaked at 13,6 percent last year.

South Africa's Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Buyelwa Sonjica says work on the draft climate change policy is continuing.
Zimbabwe's economy is forecast to grow by 2,8% in 2009.
Airbus issues a precautionary telex to airlines following the Air France tragedy.
And, an interim power tariff hike will allow Eskom to deal with its funding shortfall.

That's a round up of news making headlines today. For more on these and other stories please visit engineeringnews.co.za.