Tax collection is the only way that government generates revenues and National Treasury is already struggling to close a revenue shortfall of over R27 billion, with revenue collection deteriorating significantly. So, what are the plugs likely to be this time - given that the VAT hike has already been pulled as one of the tools in our arsenal and with an election upon us, does the Finance Minister have the luxury of going down the tax hiking route again? I spoke to David Warneke, National Tax Committee Chair at SAICA, here's his response...

Italtile released its interim numbers on Thursday, reporting a 30% surge in revenue. Partly fuelled by the upper-LSM segment which remained relatively resilient in a tough trading environment. And this further translated in a 12.6% rise in headline earnings per share to just over 54cents. We're now joined by CEO, Jan Potgieter for more perspective on the six months that was

Miner, DRDGold released its interim results today reporting a headline loss of over R46 million, operating profit plunged by 54% while revenue remained flat at R1.25 billion. Gold production fell by 3% while reserves shot up by 83% with the company upping its full-year output target to between 157 and 165 thousand ounces but with the risk that Eskom now poses, will this be achieved? Niël Pretorius, CEO of DRDGold joins us for perspective on the numbers.

The fourth quarter unemployment rate sits at 27.1%, still high but a marginal improvement from 27.5%. Meanwhile youth aged between 15-34 who are not in employment, education or training increased by 0.5 of a percentage point to 38.9%. Now last year, President Ramaphosa launched the Youth Employment Services program to create half a million jobs over this year in response to the growing youth unemployment crisis. Netcare is one of the five anchor sponsor companies of the program and has committed to developing and providing at least 1000 youths with employment in the healthcare sector over the next five years. Richard Friedland, CEO of Netcare joins us for more insight into the company's progress with YES.

Devin Schutte from The Robert Group chose Discovery Ltd one that he has chosen previously, Discovery is a very placed company at the moment. We are all aware of their shared value model, healthcare, life insurance and the short term insurance. The launch of the bank happens next month and it’s exciting to see them unpack that share value model in financial services and disrupt that space. They are very effectively franchising the vitality model into Asia, the UK and the US and not only earning franchise fees but part of the actuarial profit.

Ratings agency, Moody's has criticised President Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address for its lack of concrete policy steps and further pointed out that plans to unbundle Eskom into three entities will do very little for the utility's financial challenges. We spoke to Lucie Villa, Lead Sovereign Analyst for South Africa at Moody's who kicked off the conversation with her overall take on the speech before commenting on the Eskom split, here's that conversation.

Well, that the take from Moody's. We did reach out to Eskom but its executives were locked in an extended meeting but in the meantime, Energy Analyst & MD of EE Publishers, Chris Yelland had the luxury of a sit down with Eskom's CFO, Calib Cassim ahead of the stage four load shedding announcement, he joins us on the line with the sense he got from Calib Cassim about the country's energy security going forward.