Monday, April 19, 2010

Why would you want to leave ?


Quick STATS for those who want to leave and those who have (sorry to hear) already left
  • "South Africa is probably the leading economy in the world." (CNBC Europe)
  • South Africa’s Rand is the second best-performing emerging market currency of the 26 monitored by Bloomberg in 2009
  • South Africa sold $1.8 billion worth of cars to the US last year, putting us ahead of Sweden and Italy as suppliers to the US market.
  • In 2009, the Springboks become the first international team to be World Champions in both 15-a-side and Sevens rugby.
  • The International Monetary Forum's World Economic Outlook ranks us in the top 10% of counties in respect of Real GDP Growth Projections for 2010.
  • In the Economist Intelligence Unit's Survey of Democratic Freedom we rank 31st of of 184 countries.
  • South Africa ranks second worldwide in terms of the transparency surrounding its budgets - just behind the United Kingdom, tie with France, and ahead of New Zealand and the United States - according to the Open Budget Index.
  • The number of 'dollar millionaires' in South Africa has increased from less than 25,000 in 2004 to over 55,000 in 2007, according to the World Wealth Report
  • According to the World Pay Report, South African managers are earning disposable incomes that are higher than those in many developed countries.
  • Johannesburg ranks 2nd among countries from Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa in dealing with urbanisation and environmental challenges, in the MasterCard Insights Report on Urbanisation and Environmental Challenges.
  • South Africa ranked 44th out of 131 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2007/8.
  • South Africa was ranked as the 18th most attractive destination for Foreign Direct Investment by global strategic management consulting firm AT Kearney. 
  • Three South African cities were voted amongst the world's top 100 Most Liveable Cities in a study conducted by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Cape Town was ranked in 85th place, Johannesburg 90th and Port Elizabeth 97th.
  • Since the 1940s, South African golfers have won more golf majors than any other nation, apart from the United States.
  • South Africa has been ranked 28th among 108 countries measured for responsible competitiveness, according to the global think tank AccountAbility.
  • Johannesburg has been ranked as the eighth cheapest city in the world for expatriates, according to the most recent Cost of Living Standards Survey from Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
  • South Africa is ranked 20th out of a total of 128 economies in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2007, ahead of many developed nations, including, the United States (31), Switzerland (40), Austria (27) and France (51).
  • South Africa ranks 57th out of 157 countries in the world in terms of economic freedom, ahead of Italy (64), Brazil (101), the United Arab Emirates (63), Greece (94th), India (104th) and China (126), according to the Index of Economic Freedom 2007
  • South Africa is ranked 35th out of 178 countries for ease of doing business - ahead of Spain, Brazil and India - according to Doing Business 2008, a joint publication of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation.
  • Cape Town has the fifth-best blue sky in the world according to the UK's National Physical Laboratory
  • South African media ranks 26th out of 167 countries in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007, higher than any country in Asia, the Middle East or South America, and ahead of Japan, Spain, Italy and the United States.
  • The Johannesburg Stock Exchange was the 7th best performing stock market in 2005, according to the World Federation of Exchanges
  • Pretoria has the second largest number of embassies in the world after Washington, D.C.
  • In 2005, interest rates were at a 25-year low
  • South Africa accounts for almost 45% of the GDP of the entire African continent, with an economy three times the size of the second biggest (Egypt)
  • Almost a quarter of South Africa’s non-interest budget is spent on education
  • The University of South Africa UNISA is a pioneer of tertiary distance education and is the largest correspondence university in the world with 250,000 students
  • In 1991, South Africa became the first country in the world to provide full protection status for the Great White shark within its jurisidictional waters. Countries including USA, Australia, Malta and Namibia follwed suit later.
  • Afrikaans is the youngest official language in the world
  • According to the Economic Freedom of the World 2005 Annual Report, South Africa ranks 38th out of 127 countries in terms of ecomomic freedom, tied with France and ahead of Israel, India, Italy, China, Brazil and Russia.
  • The rand, the world's most actively traded emerging market currency, has joined an elite club of 16 currencies - the Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) - where forex transactions are settled immediately, lowering the risks of transacting across time zones. Standard Bank is the only African bank to be a shareholder partner of CLS.
  • The Singita Private Game Reserve in the Kruger National Park was voted the best hotel in the world by the readers of travel publication, Conde Nast Traveller
  • The South African Rand was the best performing currency against the US Dollar between 2002 and 2005, according to the Bloomberg's Currency Scorecard
  • South Africa's per capita GDP, corrected for purchasing power parity, positions the country as one of the 50 wealthiest in the world
  • Worldaudit.org ranks South Africa as the 40th most democratic country out of 150 nations
  • Stellenbosch University was the first university in the world to design and launch a microsatellite
  • South Africa is the 35th best place in the world to do e-business, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2007 E-Readiness Report.
  • South Africa is the best-ranked country in terms of price stability, our fiscal policy is ranked 11th, our international trade competitiveness 21st, and we are the 28th most-attractive destination for foreign direct investment, according to the World Competiveness Yearbook 2005
  • South African business owners of mid-size companies are the second most optimistic worldwide about their economic prospects of the year ahead, according to the annual Grant Thornton International Business Owners Survey for 2005.
  • South Africa is the first, and to date only, country to build nuclear weapons and then voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear weapons programme
  • The value of South African real estate improved by 30% over the past 5 years
  • Tax revenue in SA has increased by 220% over the past 10 years
  • In 2005, 10 million South Africans benefited from access to social grants
  • The number of tourists visiting South Africa has grown by 116% since 1994
  • Over the past 5 years, Consumer Confidence in SA has improved by 43%.
  • In the global measure of women in Parliament, South Africa ranks 8th in the world.
  • Of the 10 LSM levels ( LSM1=poorest; LSM10 wealthiest ), the average SA family located in LSM6
  •  Source  :     South Africa: The Good News www.sagoodnews.co.za  Full list available on their website 

This is South AFrica !



September 2009

Country, Regional & City Reports, Spotlight, Global Affairs

Continental Shift

Since the end of apartheid South Africa has become a world economic powerhouse. But how are the country's businesses placed to deal with the global recession? Janice Warman reports
Time was, not long ago, when South Africa was a pariah, isolated from the world and cut off from international sport, theatre, music and business. Even the Boeing 747s of its national airline were banned from African airspace and had to skirt the continent's coastline on their long journeys north.
Fifteen years into its new era of democracy, it is back in the fold of the international community. Singers and actors for whom visiting South Africa could have meant career suicide during the apartheid era flock to the country. The 2010 FIFA World Cup is eagerly awaited. And later this month Johannesburg is hosting a world summit on arts and culture, which could as well have been held in Munich, Vienna or Paris.
The same is true for the country's role in the wider business world. Multinational investors are back; but more and more, South Africa is becoming a net exporter of its own companies.
This trend has not been halted by the current recession. Although the economy is forecast to contract by 1.8% in 2009, it is still expected to expand by 2.1% next year. Africa's largest economy has been protected from the worst effects of the global recession by stringent banking regulations and exchange controls, leaving it well placed to make further inroads into international markets.
According to African Business magazine, 15 out of the top 16 companies on the continent are South African, as are 54 out of the top 90. And the companies in the former apartheid state are flexing their muscles and finding new markets in Africa and across the world.
"South Africa is probably the leading economy in the world," says Dr Martyn Davies, chief executive of Frontier Advisory, a research and strategy company working in frontier and emerging markets and director of the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University. "No other country of our size and economic ranking has produced as many globally successful Fortune 500 companies as we have. The only comparable country is South Korea. There is a phenomenal ability for South African companies to grow and go global from South Africa. No other comparably sized emerging market has been able to succeed in doing that; not even the Chinese, not even the Indians."
Many South African companies, particularly when the post-apartheid era dawned in 1994, turned their attention first to Africa. "We see Africa as a business opportunity. Sure it's risky, sure it's tough, but we have a saying: Africa's not for sissies," says Davies. "And the ability of the South African businesses to adapt to a challenging environment in Africa is extremely good, probably better than anyone else."
Current success stories include Standard Bank, presently in 17 African countries and in a further 19 worldwide; SAB Miller, which dominates the continent's beer brewing industry and is number two brewer in the world; Naspers, South Africa's largest media company; Shoprite Holdings, Africa's largest food retailer; fellow food retailer Nasmart; mobile phone operators MTN and Vodacom; and ABSA Bank.
All are seeing annual growth of around 40% year-on-year despite the economic crisis, a phenomenon Davies attributes to the rise of the African consumer, which, he says, "used to be an oxymoron; now it's a reality".
Jacko Maree, chief executive of Standard Bank, points out that South Africa represents 0.6% of the world's GDP, yet there have been times when the market capitalisation of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange was in the top 10 in the world; it now ranks at between 13 and 14. South Africa, he says, has "always had a sophisticated market system and has punched above its weight".
Standard Bank expanded first into Africa, including Nigeria, Uganda and Botswana, and then turned its attention to emerging markets worldwide, including China. "It was the cherry on the cake when the biggest bank in the world, ICBC, decided to take a strategic 20% investment in our bank," says Maree. It was the biggest investment ever taken by a Chinese bank outside China and signalled clearly that China was interested in Africa. Standard Bank has also announced a strategic partnership with Troika Dialog, the largest independent investment bank in Russia.
One of South Africa's most successful companies is Media24, the print media arm of its oldest publisher Naspers, whose best-known newspaper is the once infamous national daily Die Burger, mouthpiece of the apartheid regime. Naspers has reinvented itself and now, in addition to the print business, has a pay TV arm and wide-ranging global internet interests. Like Standard Bank, it has bought into the world's biggest market, via a stake in Tencent, China's largest instant messaging platform, which has 230 million users. It has also acquired Tradus, the Eastern European equivalent of the online auction company eBay.
Francois Groepe, chief executive of Media24, says there are two reasons to expand into Africa and worldwide: "Much of the growth will be in developing countries, where the underlying economic growth is typically higher than the rest of the world." Equally important, he says, is that advertising spend as a percentage of GDP is often lower in developing countries: "Over time, one would assume that the gap would narrow; therefore we find the developing countries very attractive – the markets we focus on are African countries, sub-Saharan Africa, the BRIC countries – Brazil, India, Russia, China – where we focus on not only the print media but also on the technological side."
So is South Africa especially entrepreneurial? "South African business, because of the sanctions era, had to become very inventive," says Groepe. "There is a can-do attitude, particularly with rolling out into Africa, that stands us in good stead."
And there's another benefit, he adds: "We are seen as far less of a threat. We don't come with the geopolitical baggage that other players would come with."
The initial move abroad for South African companies came after sanctions ended and was born out of a need to diversify currency risk. Moving money into Africa was easier than abroad as it was encouraged by the Reserve Bank. Most companies pushed into several countries, working at higher operating margins in order to balance the operational and currency risks.
Retail expansion across Africa has been particularly successful. As Investec portfolio manager Rob Forsyth says: "The African continent is very brand loyal; with low disposable income, you need a high degree of certainty that the product will deliver what it says."
It's not that South Africa has been without its rivals. China and India have swept into Africa; and now homegrown African companies are taking back some market share.
Nevertheless, "the fact that South Africa's GDP, at an estimated $239bn (€168bn), is nearly 40 times that of the average African country makes it no surprise that South Africa has become one of the biggest investors on the continent in a decade," says African business specialist Dianna Games.
Meanwhile, at home, despite the prevailing economic climate – which has led to some agitation spilling onto the streets – the planning minister Trevor Manuel recently reaffirmed that the government's five-year infrastructure investment programme announced in 2006 is still on target to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014. Manuel, formerly the ANC government's popular finance minister, said the far-reaching programme would help to pull the country out of its first recession in 17 years.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Giraff

Kruger Park Jun 08

a Stroll in the Park


Kruger Park June 08

coastal expressions



Images from South Africa's West coast (Haroldsbay)

Thursday, April 2, 2009

My Country

I will be publishing some images from all over South Africa in the next few months

This was taken in the Kruger National park last year in June

Woman over 40

60 Minutes Correspondent Andy Rooney of CBS came up with what I regard as a very true set of observations:

As I grow in age, I value women over 40 most of all. Here are just a few reasons why:

  • A woman over 40 will never wake you in the middle of the night and ask, 'What are you thinking?' She doesn't care what you think.
  • If a woman over 40 doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do, and it's usually more interesting.
  • Women over 40 are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant.
  • Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it.
  • Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it's like to be unappreciated.
  • Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over 40.
  • Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 40 is far sexier than her younger counterpart.
  • Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off you are a jerk if you are acting like one. You don't ever have to wonder where you stand with