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BusinessLIVE - For Your Ear

Listen to the latest BusinessLIVE articles from the news desk of Business Day, Financial Mail and the Business Times.

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Daily English South Africa Business News · News
12,931 Episodes
988 – 1008

Lockdown economics: which SA online stores have made a mint

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted consumers’ lives and battered their finances. Yet since lockdown level 5 began, smartphones and PCs have emerged as the new heart of the home, prompting a different kind of consumer behaviour. Research house Growth from Knowledge (GfK), which piloted a consumer survey in 30 countries,…
12 Aug 2020 4PM 5 min

DENNIS DAVIS: Fix the tax net holes

Last week, that very astute financial journalist Claire Bisseker wrote a devastating analysis in the FM concerning the state of the economy (, and the danger that we have passed the point where recovery is still possible. Take but three indicators she cited: between 2009 and this year, economic growth…
12 Aug 2020 4PM 4 min

ANDRE VISSER: The JSE’s balancing act

The Covid-19 pandemic is a humanitarian catastrophe that continues to pulse across the globe. Its impact has been far-reaching internationally, in our country and on many of our listed companies on the JSE. As a key part of market infrastructure and the frontline regulator, the JSE is required to make…
12 Aug 2020 4PM 4 min

EDITORIAL: The frailty of the National Treasury

The National Treasury and the Reserve Bank — staffed by world-class officials who produce top-quality analysis and operate with a high degree of transparency — have long been regarded as two of the strongest pillars propping up SA’s flagging institutional capacity.Over the past decade, the Bank has gone from strength…
12 Aug 2020 3PM 3 min

EDITORIAL: Ace’s ANC eulogy

South Africans who have for years resisted the admittedly bleak verdict on the governing party — that it’s effectively dead as an ethical organisation — will have been forced to reassess their position this week. What will have tipped the scales is the statement by ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, when…
12 Aug 2020 2PM 1 min

EDITORIAL: Let’s open up, but safety first

If, as expected, President Cyril Ramaphosa does announce the opening of the rest of the economy this week, he might channel the British economist John Maynard Keynes and say when facts change, he changes his mind. The businesses that have been on the receiving end of some of the less…
12 Aug 2020 1PM 3 min

US consumer prices push higher for second consecutive month

Washingto — US consumer prices rose more than expected in July, with a measure of underlying inflation increasing by the most in more than 29 years amid broad gains in the costs of goods and services. The report from the labor department on Wednesday, however, probably does not mark the…
12 Aug 2020 1PM 5 min

EU considers new sanctions as Belarus intensifies crackdown

Minsk — European Union foreign ministers will hold a special meeting on Friday to discuss the unstable situation in Belarus, with some floating the possibility of renewed sanctions from the bloc. The EU “lifted sanctions against Belarus because the country had taken steps in the right direction,” German foreign minster…
12 Aug 2020 12PM 2 min

Russia dismisses nay-sayers over its Covid-19 vaccine

Moscow — Russia has brushed aside international concerns about the safety of the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine and announced it will start mass inoculation this month before clinical testing is completed. “Western colleagues, who can sense the competitive advantage of the Russian drug, are expressing opinions that are completely unjustified…
12 Aug 2020 12PM 3 min

America’s First Mind may be a little dim

Local punters have been able to sample just what Donald Trump’s increasingly unhinged trade war with China will taste like.The general consensus is likely to be "unpleasant".Citing privacy concerns, Trump took aim at TikTok first, issuing what South Africans of a certain age would remember as a banning order which…
12 Aug 2020 12PM 1 min

Mauritius tourism —first Covid-19, now a toxic oil spill

Nairobi — Tourist operators in Mauritius fear that an oil spill from a Japanese ship will further damage their businesses, already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, and could cost jobs if their pristine beaches are spoiled. Tourism generated 63-billion rupees ($1.6bn) for the economy last year. In May, the central…
12 Aug 2020 12PM 2 min

A good week for Brad Binder

A good week You don’t need to be a petrolhead to enjoy the news that Potchefstroom-born Brad Binder became the first SA rider to win a MotoGP race after taking gold at the Czech Grand Prix this weekend — and the first novice to win since 2013. Heaven knows, South…
12 Aug 2020 11AM 1 min

Total brings rig to drill fresh prospect at Mossel Bay gas find

Total’s oil and gas rig has arrived in Cape Town in preparation to expand on the petroleum giant’s significant discovery off the coast of Mossel Bay. The rig, known as the DeepSea Stavanger, was built in Norway and commissioned by Total and its partners to drill the Luiperd prospect in…
12 Aug 2020 11AM 2 min

ANDILE NTINGI: A potted history of Transkei’s chiefs and kings

A few days after Bhaca king Madzikane II Thandisizwe Diko was linked to irregular procurement of Covid-19 personal protective equipment (PPE) by the Gauteng provincial government, a friend sent me a text asking how many kings there are in the former Transkei homeland. As a Xhosa-speaking South African, I am…
12 Aug 2020 11AM 5 min

UK economy shrinks by record 20.4% in second quarter

London — Britain’s economy shrank by a record 20.4% in the second quarter when the coronavirus lockdown was tightest, the most severe contraction reported by any major economy so far, with a wave of job losses set to hit later in 2020. The scale of the economic hit may also…
12 Aug 2020 11AM 4 min

Teens who vape more likely to have shown Covid-19 symptoms

Bengaluru — Vaping may be associated with a five to seven times increased risk of Covid-19 among US teenagers and young adults, a study published on Tuesday suggests. Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine analysed nationally representative survey data collected in May from 4,351 participants aged 13—24 years…
12 Aug 2020 10AM 1 min

Why state stimulus measures are like (bad) karma

Governments around the world have embarked on the greatest financial experiment of all time. That experiment has been labelled by the media as “stimulus” and involves a mixture of government aid, tax relief, unemployment payments and central bank money manipulation on the grandest scale imaginable. We’re tripping over the financial…
12 Aug 2020 10AM 6 min

Demand for diamonds plummets but bright spot is affluent investors

Johannesburg/Mumbai — As the coronavirus pandemic upended the global diamond industry, shuttering mines from Lesotho to Canada and disrupting supply chains, Rajen Patel swapped diamond polishing for peanut farming. Patel, who worked for a decade in India’s Surat where about 80% of the world’s diamonds are polished, joined the exodus…
12 Aug 2020 10AM 5 min
988 – 1008