Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
Johannesburg - Just over a third of South Africa's top 120 companies are likely to retrench staff in the next six months, Business Day reported on Friday.
The worst-affected sectors would be construction, mining, industrials, financial services, forestry, paper and pulp, vehicles and logistics, the newspaper said, citing a snap survey carried out this week by business advisory services firm KPMG.
The survey also found that about 65% of companies were likely to offer staff voluntary packages instead of forcing them out of work.
About 90% of companies across all sectors had steeply cut costs, but KPMG said this related not to subprime woes, but rather to local economic factors such as high interest rates, inflation and the volatile exchange rate.
Carol Read, a director and policy board member at KPMG, was quoted as saying: "At first glance this may seem to be a negative outlook to the survey results, however, on further examination as to the rationale of this feedback, we found that many businesses view this strategy as merely a short- to medium-term answer and are therefore examining what other interventions can be undertaken to correct this imbalance to ensure long-term prosperity of commerce and growth in our economy."
- Sapa