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Cape Town - A roundup of Wednesday's top economic and finance reads on Fin24.
SA Reserve Bank cuts interest rates
The monetary policy committee of the SA Reserve Bank has decided to cut interest rates by 25 basis points.
This means the repo rate is now 6.5% and the prime lending rate 10%.
The last time the central bank cut the repo rate was in July 2017, when the MPC reduced the rate by 25 basis points from 7% to 6.75%.
Huge petrol price hike to kick in next Wednesday
The price of 95 unleaded and leaded petrol in Gauteng will increase by 72c/l and at the coast 62c/l with effect from next Wednesday, the Department of Energy announced on Wednesday.
The per litre pump price of 93 unleaded and leaded petrol will increase 69c/l in Gauteng and 59c/l at the coast, according to the official announcement.
Listeria takes a bite out of trade as countries ban SA's processed meat
The Department of Trade and Industry told a joint sitting of Parliament’s portfolio committee on health and portfolio committee on agriculture, forestry and fisheries that more than six countries have banned products from South Africa in light of listeriosis concerns.
The bacteria infected at least a thousand people around the country last year and at the beginning of March 183 deaths had already been reported.
The latest cases have also rocked RCL Foods and Tiger Brands’ Enterprise Foods, whose facilities have been linked with listeria monocytogenes by the Department of Health.
MPs resolve to subpoena Markus Jooste
Parliament’s joint-committees have agreed to follow a process to subpoena former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste, after he declined an invitation to appear before them.
The committees on finance, public accounts, trade and industry and public service and administration on Wednesday discussed how they would pursue Jooste.
Chair of the standing committee of finance Yunus Carrim told Fin24 on Tuesday that Jooste’s reason that he could not appear before the committees because he is no longer with Steinhoff, was unacceptable to the committees.
How the Guptas bought themselves an auditor
In a fronting deal, Gupta lieutenant Salim Essa provided R107m for the “management buyout” of a pioneering black audit firm.
As winter gave way to spring in 2016, Mitesh Patel made his Faustian pact.
To the world he would own Nkonki Inc, the pioneering black accounting firm where he had risen through the ranks. But he would not be his own man. He agreed to front for others who were tied to the Gupta crime family.
Gupta lieutenant Essa, who funded Patel’s management buyout, might have considered it a masterstroke in the dark art of state capture. What front better than in that model of independence and probity, the auditing profession, to profit from state contracts and bend compliance procedures your way?
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