Economic news of the week: SONA 2020

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In this edition of the Business Day Spotlight, we look at some key business and economic takeaways from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation (SONA) delivered in Parliament on Thursday.

Our host Mudiwa Gavaza is joined in studio by Annabel Bishop, chief economist at Investec and Nema Ramkhelawan-Bhana, head of global markets research at Rand Merchant Bank to discuss the issues.

The conversations starts with struggling power utility, Eskom, an issue that the President quickly admitted in his speech was dire and need to be address.

The panel agrees that President Ramaphosa was quite upfront in addressing the problems the country faces, and that it was encouraging that he chose to address the power country’s power generation struggle head on.

The discussion then moves to the issue of public finances. How will these government programs be finance?

Ramkhelawan-Bhana and Bishop also highlight references made sovereign wealth fund and a state bank, together with statements about the ease of doing business in SA.
14 Feb 2020 English South Africa Business News · News

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