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Delegates at World Economic Forum conference listen to Zuma’s request for a “different kind of relationship” that is not dominated by one side.

AFRICA must build a trade relationship with China that benefits the continent without becoming one-sided, President Jacob Zuma said yesterday.

China was approaching Africa without the baggage of the old colonial powers, which meant that a different interaction was possible, he told a conference organised by the World Economic Forum in Cape Town.

“With the coming of China comes a different kind of relationship … let’s do business,” Mr Zuma said. “We are very much aware of the size of China. We need to take a position that is clearly understood by us — how do we trade with China in a way that benefits us as well as them?”

China is SA’s main trade partner and the South African economy can benefit from a stronger relationship with the Asian giant, by importing cheaper goods from it. But this has the potential to hurt local manufacturing capacity.

Last month, SA joined the Brics group of key emerging markets, adding itself to Brazil, Russia, China and India. Mr Zuma made it clear that SA would represent Africa’s interests in the bloc, as well as its own. “Our relationship with China and the Bric countries must benefit Africa as well,” Mr Zuma said, speaking at a panel discussion titled Africa and the New Reality.

The conference, organised by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum, brought together African presidents, top government officials and company CEs for a brainstorming session on boosting the continent’s place in the global economy.

Mr Zuma sent a reassuring signal to business delegates at the event, saying it was important to “harmonise” political and economic decisions in a more globalised world.

“We can’t take a political decision that overlooks what is happening elsewhere,” he said.

Earlier in the session, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan made similar comments. SA was already doing what it could to reduce red tape and create a more enabling environment for business, he said. “What we do need is a better and more straightforward dialogue between the private sector and ourselves,” Mr Gordhan said.

Botswana’s central bank governor, Linah Mohohlo, said that Africa should build on its success in weathering the global financial crisis. This year, African countries would grow faster than any other region apart from Asia.

SA should use its membership of the Group of 20 (G-20) countries to benefit other African states, Ms Mohohlo said.

She was sharply critical of a decision to remove Egypt from the chairmanship of the International Monetary and Financial Committee after unrest in the North African country. “We had to lose out as Africa,” she said.

Mr Gordhan spoke of the need to find alternative sources of finance for Africa as international aid flows dried up.

He was also critical of attempts by the G-20 to find ways of rebalancing global trade and investment flows.

“This has been turned into a technical exercise, and is becoming a geopolitical war,” he told the conference.

But the business case for Africa was being recognised, especially by companies which saw that a 20- to 40-year commitment was required, Mr Gordhan said.

The World Economic Forum’s competitiveness survey ranks SA behind China and India but ahead of Brazil and Russia.

Source: businessday.co.uk

CFO asks his CEO, “What happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave the company?”

CEO answers, ‘What happens if we don’t, and they stay?”

Crime, HIV, corruption… We, seemingly, live in dark days, yet there’s never been a better time to invest, or live, in South Africa than the present.

There were no “good old days” in this country.  It’s natural that some beg to differ; humans have an uncanny ability to forget, and some have a vested interest in doing so.  We forget that 14 000 died during the early nineties in political violence that almost led to civil war.  We forget apartheid and the terrible and constant state of distrust, paranoia and fear that reigned.  We forget our isolation from the world.  We forget the young (barely) men that died fighting constant wars on our borders.  We forget our Total War in the early 1900s.  Each “tribe” or “nation” in this disparate country has been battling every other one at some point.  We forget that this is the first time in our history that we’re at peace.

We still have so far to go, and that makes it hard to realise how far we’ve come, but our future is bright; we’re transcending our horrific past and less–than-perfect present.

South Africa has no enemies; a war seems almost unimaginable.  We sit comfortably around the table with the West and the developing superpowers.  Even our ally’s enemies are not our enemies.  We are the world.

The drop in the rate of violent crime is relentless though, admittedly, off a very high base.  The number of murders in South Africa has dropped from 25 925 in 1995 to 18 341 in 2009.

However, the main reason to be positive about South Africa, in my opinion, remains purely economic.

Not only have we recently become part of the rising BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), but being the most developed economy in Africa places us in a unique position to gain from the renaissance happening elsewhere in Africa.

In the decade to 2010, six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies were in sub-Saharan Africa.  Angola, where we were fighting a war a generation ago, has the highest GDP growth rate on earth.

The IMF forecasts that seven of the top ten fastest-growing economies in the next ten years will be African, while Standard Chartered forecasts Africa’s economy to grow at an average annual rate of seven percent over the next 20 years, marginally faster than China’s.

Our improving fortunes will increasingly be driven by skyrocketing commodity prices due to rising developing nations’ vast and ever-increasing demand for resources that we possess in almost embarrassing abundance.

Economic management is improving and, in stark contrast with past governments, we have a conservative Treasury that, even in face of daunting challenges, has kept a tight rein on the purse strings. 

South Africa is politically stable with a strong rule-of-law that is enforced by a fiercely independent judiciary.  Corruption, where it happens, gets exposed by a free and vibrant media. 

Consultancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers recently released a report, “The World in 2050″, in which it projects that South Africa will be the seventh fastest-growing economy on the planet between now and 2050.

We’ve got a plethora of very complicated problems, but none more so than those we’ve successfully dealt with in the past.  The trend is set – the future looks bright…

Source: iafrica.com

http://personalfinance.iafrica.com/moreinvest/721297.html

SA is the “right candidate” for the emerging market economic grouping known as Brics, the members of which are Brazil, Russia, India, China and, most recently, SA, according to International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.

She was addressing the media on Monday in Johannesburg, following discussions with representatives of the other Brics countries in the lead-up to the next Brics summit, which will be held in Sanya on south China’s tropical island of Hainan Province on 14 April.

The minister added that SA, as the newest member of Brics, was “quite honoured and elated” to have been invited to join “this very, very, important global grouping”.

“We believe we belong in Brics because to complete the grouping they needed a country on the African continent and we thought we were the right candidate.”

The minister noted that SA ran the biggest and most diverse economy on African soil.

“We also have financial institutions that are world-class,” she added.

The acronym Bric was coined by Jim O’Neill in a paper entitled “Building Better Global Economic Brics”. It is widely used as a symbol of the shift in global economic power away from the developed economies towards the developing world.

O’Neill is on record as saying recently that SA was just “too small” an economy to join the Bric grouping.

However, Nkoana-Mashabane stated that, while the political leaders of the Bric countries may have listened to O’Neill, they had found that his thoughts were mainly occupied by economics.

“Looking at the new global political order unfolding out there, the members of Bric also thought there was a political space for this country in their grouping — they knew Bric would not be complete if it did not have the voice of the most influential country in the south, particularly in Africa — and that is SA.”

SA was officially admitted to the grouping on 24 December 2010.

 Source: www.iafrica.com