Wednesday, March 24, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Brad Dubbelman.

Making headlines:

The Economic Development Department expects to finalise proposals for small business funding by November this year, and raise R2-billion for business financing, said Minister Ebrahim Patel yesterday.
Speaking in the National Assembly during a debate on his budget vote, Patel said that the department would, from April 1, guide the work of three economic regulatory bodies and three development finance institutions. These are: the Competition Commission, the Competition Tribunal, and the International Trade Administration Commission, and Khula Enterprise Finance, the South African Micro-Finance Apex Fund, and the Industrial Development Corporation.
Patel added that good progress is being made in establishing the ministerial advisory panel, which will serve as an ideas forum. He said that by the end of this year, the department plans to have the core of the Economic Development Institute in place and to produce ten policy documents on growth and employment issues by March 2011.

A fixed exchange rate regime would not be a solution for South Africa, said National Treasury director-general Letsetja Kganyago yesterday, pointing out that it would be difficult to implement and that it would carry a range of economic costs.
Such a regime would require South Africa to give up its monetary sovereignty and adopt the same monetary policy stance to a country whose exchange rate is being targeted, even if it is not appropriate for domestic economic conditions, he said at a Mail & Guardian trade and industrial policy event in Pretoria.
South Africa's current managed float approach towards the currency, seems to be the "most reliant and correct" approach, when judging global economic history and performance.
Kgnayago commented that the country's experience in trying to fix the interest rate and control currency came at "very high school fees". He added that the rand's recovery is accompanying the normalisation in global investor appetite in especially commodity-linked countries such as South Africa, Brazil and Australia.

The Western Cape provincial government is to tighten controls over the spending of its top politicians by producing its own ministerial handbook, said Premier Helen Zille yesterday.
Speaking in a debate on the Premier's budget vote in the provincial legislature, she said that her administration did not believe that taxpayer's money should be spent on "expensive cars, lavish parties and other luxuries that only benefit politicians".
A provincial ministerial handbook would override the current ministerial handbook produced by national government, which applies to the national Cabinet, as well as all nine provincial executives. Zille says that the current national ministerial handbook "facilitates and legalises a form of power abuse."

Also making headlines:

The National Prosecuting Authority reports the conviction of South Africa's first sex traffickers as a new Human trafficking Bill goes before Parliament.
International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo says that monitoring Sudan's election next month will be like monitoring a vote in Hitler's Germany.
The Presidency reports that President Jacob Zuma's legal fees came to roughly R5-million in the year before he was elected.
And, the UN High Commission for Refugees reports that the number of asylum seekers in the West last year remained stable, shattering the myth that there is a flood of people trying to reach rich countries.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.