Thursday April 07, 2011

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Jessica Hannah

Making headlines:

A healthy economic recovery in South Africa requires more than the consumer, and business investment will be needed to create some symmetry, Absa Capital head of research Jeff Gable said. Speaking at Absa Capital’s economic forum, Gable pointed out that household consumers were the driving force behind the 2,8% gross domestic product growth achieved in 2010, and added that the recovery would remain consumer-led for much of 2011. “Consumers have been boosted by wage growth, while lower interest rates have also eased the burden of past debt. Now we are searching for some kind of symmetry, as consumers and businesses are currently pulling in different directions,” he noted.

Passports of Zimbabweans who have applied for the documents are ready for collection, the Zimbabwe consulate in South Africa said on Wednesday.
"We are currently dealing with applications from Gauteng and will go to other areas in the country at a later stage," spokesperson Chris Mapanga said. However, if people who have applied for the passports in areas outside Gauteng needed the documents urgently they could collect them from the consulate's office in Meadowdale, Johannesburg. Mapanga was responding to a statement earlier issued by Passop that the consulate would allegedly not deliver passports to applicants outside Gauteng and that furthermore there was a collection deadline at its Johannesburg office on Friday, April 8 - despite some people having applied in various provinces across the country.

Public-private partnerships might have the potential to solve some of Africa’s considerable infrastructure backlogs, but should not be seen as a silver bullet, advisory firm KPMG said on Wednesday. Speaking at the Railways and Harbours conference in Johannesburg KPMG infrastructure and projects in Africa director Johan Greyling said that the continent was only spending about half, around $45-billion a year, of what was required to bridge the infrastructure backlog when it should be spending about $95-billion a year. On average, an African country needed to spend about 25% of its gross domestic product on infrastructure, but is currently only spending about 15%. With Africa’s population set to double in the next 25 years, the infrastructure problem would keep growing.

Also making headlines:
South Africa, Togo and Angola are possible safe havens for the Côte d’Ivoire’s besieged Laurent Gbagbo should he negotiate an exit from the West African country, African Union sources said.
Libya accused Britain of damaging an oil pipeline in an air strike, hours after rebels said that government attacks had halted production of oil they hope to sell to finance their uprising.
And, Sudan's security forces confiscated copies of an opposition newspaper, the latest crackdown on press freedom in Africa's largest country ahead of the looming split of its oil-producing south.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.