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Cape Town - A roundup of Thursday's top economic and finance reads on Fin24.
High risk of load shedding remains despite a trade union accepting a wage offer from Eskom.
The electricity grid remains constrained with a high probability of load shedding between 17:00 and 21:00 on Thursday evening, Eskom has said.
Consumers have again been asked to use electricity sparingly.
On Wednesday, it met with employees at dispute resolution body the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, or CCMA, in an attempt to resolve an impasse over wage negotiations. It was due to meet again on Thursday, it said.
Meanwhile, trade union Solidarity says it has accepted a wage offer from Eskom.
Rand reels as hawkish Fed, trade war add to investor fears
The rand headed for its worst drop against the dollar in two weeks as a hawkish Federal Reserve and escalating trade tensions weighed on emerging-market currencies.
A day after the Fed’s upbeat assessment of the US economy drove the dollar and Treasury yields higher at the expense of developing-nation asset prices, China further rattled investors by vowing to retaliate against President Donald Trump’s latest trade salvo.
Implats to cut 13 000 jobs as it scales down on loss-making operations
Impala Platinum [JSE:IMP] said on Thursday that it was working to mitigate the risk of thousands of job losses during its restructuring programme.
Implats said it was "fully committed" to minimising the potential impact of the strategic restructuring process at Impala Rustenburg on jobs, as well as the spillover effect that potential job losses would have on the communities near the Rustenburg mining operations.
PASA cracks down on debit order fraud
South Africa has been paying the piper, and other people it didn’t quite mean to pay, with a significant increase in debit order errors, disputes and fraud, the Payments Association of South Africa has said.
However, the annual PASA conference on Wednesday saw a breakthrough in this regard. As of August 1, DebiCheck is now live across ten banks – including Standard Bank [JSE:SBK], FNB, ABSA, Nedbank [JSE:NED], Capitec [JSE:CPI], Bidvest [JSE:BVT] and UBank – and will be a debit order fraud game changer, said PASA CEO Walter Volker, who addressed the conference on Wednesday morning.
"Today is the day from which every bank is live," Volker said.
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