Friday February 18, 2011

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Shannon de Ryhove

Making headlines:

The Department of Labour (DoL) of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) will meet on Friday to discuss extensive labour law amendments published for comment in December. Deputy director-general for the DoL, Les Kettledas, said that the meeting comes a day after the closure of public comments on the Labour Relations Act, Basic Conditions of Employment Act, Employment Equity Act, as well as the Employment Services Bill. "This meeting of the Nedlac task team will actually build on the first one which was held in January. The task team comprises members from Nedlac constituents from business, labour, government and the community," added Kettledas. He said that the Nedlac partners would meet until they reached a consensus.

Ugandans will vote on Friday in elections expected to return long-serving President Yoweri Museveni to power after a bitter campaign marked by opposition calls for street protests if the vote is deemed rigged. The East African country's front running opposition candidate, Kizza Besigye, has repeatedly said that there could be Egyptian-style unrest if the poll is unfair. The discovery of billions of barrels of recoverable oil reserves along the country's western border has upped the stakes. The vote's winner will be tasked with charting Uganda's emergence as a top-50 oil producer and managing the resulting petrodollars and foreign investor interest.

The Bureau for Economic Research (BER) said that South Africa’s gross domestic product growth accelerated towards 4% quarter-on-quarter in the final three months of 2010, after the economy expanded by 2,6% in the third quarter. The fourth-quarter growth would result in the economy expanding by 2,7% for 2010, following the contraction of 1,7% recorded in 2009. Statistics South Africa is due to release the official fourth-quarter growth figures on Tuesday, ahead of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s Budget speech a day later. However, the BER pointed out that the growth recovery to date has not been broad based, with robust consumer spending providing most of the impetus, while fixed investment remained poor, albeit slowly gaining traction.

Also making headlines:
The US will allocate $150-million to help Egypt with its democratic transformation and economic recovery following the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
Deadly clashes broke out in several towns in Libya on Thursday after the opposition called for protests against leader Muammar Gaddafi in a rare show of defiance inspired by uprisings in other Arab States.
The long-running Doha trade talks have finally started to move after a constructive week of talks among key powers that grappled with issues of substance, the US envoy to the World Trade Organisation said.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today