Stalking Venus

Business Report’s top story of the morning is that (surprise!) our economy is still buggered sideways up the ass with a rusty steel rod. Warnings by Nedbank and African Bank Investments Limited (Abil) yesterday reckon that South Africans need to punch new holes in their belts because of the worsening situation.

Nedbank said yesterday that earnings were threatened by food and fuel inflation and rising interest rates. Abil told the market it had had to reduce the net asset value of Ellerine, the furniture company it had bought, by R450 million because of rising levels of bad debt…

[Also,] as consumers cut back on spending, manufacturers are unable to take up the slack because of record input costs and increasingly unreliable power supplies.

The article goes on to tell us that Razia Khan, the bigwig financial braniac heading up African Research for Standard Chartered Bank in London, says that in the near term, we’re all pretty much screwed.

Inflation as measured by CPIX, the consumer price index excluding mortgage interest costs, will peak at a higher level than anything we’ve seen in recent years. It will hit 15.1 percent in November and re-enter the target only in October 2009. In March, inflation hit a five-year high of 10.1 percent.

Yay for the New South Africa!

So what does all this mean for all of those who’ve lodged visa applications for Australia, Canada and New Zealand? It means you need to start thinking about getting your investments in order as soon as you can. Investigate currency transfer options and offshore investments, because - just like you - if your money stays in South Africa, it’s fucked.