All eyes will be on Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and his briefcase, when he walks into Parliament to table his last Medium Term Budget Policy Statement of the current administration, before Parliament, today.

Dubbed the mini budget, Gordhan’s speech – like his previous mini budgets – is expected to grab the attention of the financial markets with fine tunings that will bring about certainty to the government’s economic and fiscal policies.

The mini budget comes at the back of stagnant growth that according to the Reserve Bank, has been brought about labour unrests and domestic production stoppages.

But despite these challenges, Gordhan is not expected to make sweeping announcements, but to rather stick to his winning formula – implementing the National Development Plan (NDP) – the government’s vision to eradicating poverty, improving the quality of education, health care, creating jobs and to pronounce on bulk investments in infrastructure.

When Gordhan walked into Parliament to present his first mini budget in 2009 – the first of President Jacob Zuma’s administration – times were tough.

The country and the rest of the world had just suffered a major blow due to a deepened recession, with an estimated 1 million South Africans losing their jobs when employers rolled out massive retrenchments in response to the global crisis.

At the time, Gordhan’s main aim was to introduce immediate remedies to soften the job-loss blow, which included re-skilling retrenched workers and extending support to industries that were in distress or going through retrenchments.

With exports going down at the time due to the crisis, and the economic outlook being revised downwards due to a global slowdown, Gordhan saw a need to shift the government focus to vigorous infrastructure investment in a bid to ride the recession tide. This also necessitated borrowing.

Gordhan also announced austerity measures – instructing government departments to tighten their belts by avoiding wasteful expenditure like “golf days” and taking a tough stance on corruption.

Gordhan also told Parliament that there was a need to review how the government worked, from upping service delivery to fiscal policy reforms.

Fast forward to two years later, in 2011, the NDP, chaired by Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel, produced the NDP – the country’s vision that set out to robustly deal with structural economic challenges brought about by apartheid policies.

This plan, which has now been adopted as policy, aimed at strengthening municipal finances and investing in urban infrastructure; promotion of special economic zones for industrial and export opportunities; accelerating the creation of youth employment opportunities and improving living conditions in informal settlements, including mining communities.

It also set out to expand exports, especially to emerging markets, and realising investment opportunities in Africa.

At the back of this, and many other fiscal and monetary policy reforms that the National Treasury and the Reserve Bank have overseen, Gordhan rode the tide and did what needed to be done to turn things around and ensure that Zuma’s administration did not suffer deeper wounds due to the after effects of the recession.

His 2012 mini budget focused on the NDP priorities and outcomes and set the scene for his main budget announcement in February.

The progress that Gordhan has made, and how he instilled confidence in emerging markets through partnerships with emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India and China – known as BRICS – earned him a lot of respect. So much that he was recently named Sub-Saharan Africa's Finance Minister of the Year by emerging markets for his tough stance on fiscal discipline.

"The prudent fiscal policy led by Pravin Gordhan, who became finance minister in 2009 at the height of the global economic crisis, has been praised by analysts, especially since South Africa is more exposed than other emerging markets to dangers stemming from an eventual pullback of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve," read the citation by Emerging Markets.

Lastly, South Africa is an active member of the G20 major economies, and after the recent Russia meeting, G20 leaders signed a St Petersburg Action Plan that called on South Africa to: “centralize the prudential supervision of financial institutions, enhance protection measures for financial consumers and expanding the scope of regulation to include credit rating agencies...”.

With the Cabinet having already approved a policy granting black-listed consumers credit amnesty, it remains to be seen what other announcements Gordhan will make today. – SANews.gov.za

Oh great another post about candle stick formations. *Which one now Omar?? *The “multiverse-reversal-with-a-flip formation??” The internet is chocked full of blogs, sites and training courses that include a well-known approach to market analysis using candlestick formations. For those of you who don’t know already, candlestick formation usage in trading attempts to look at a […]Author information


Marc Walton
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I have coached 1000's of home based forex traders. Currently developing a professionals trading course here at the Forex Training Academy with ex hedge fund trader:Fotis Papatheofanous, 20 year veteran trader & psychologist: Rich Friesen & former student of mine, turned full time trader & now a mentor::Omar Eltoukhy
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Washington - Senior House Republicans plan to see if they can end the fiscal standoff that shut down the US government by crafting a broader fiscal deal, aides said.

The House GOP plans a closed-door meeting Friday morning to discuss a possible broader budget and fiscal strategy after Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told advisers over lunch on Thursday he didn't want to broker a deal to fund federal agencies and reopen the government, only to face immediate negotiations over raising the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Treasury Department estimates it will not have enough money to pay all its bills after October 17. It has said not raising the statutory borrowing limit before that date could produce a historic US default on its national debt.

GOP lawmakers started exploring whether the political stalemate over funding the government could be resolved by crafting a broader fiscal package that would include an increase in the debt ceiling, the Journal and The Washington Post said.

Boehner expressed optimism at the lunch he might be able to combine the two issues in negotiations with the White House and Senate Democrats, the Journal said.

"This needs to be a big bipartisan deal," Republican Tom Cole, R-Okla., a close Boehner ally, told the Post as he emerged from the luncheon meeting in the speaker's office.

"This is much more about the debt ceiling and a larger budget agreement than it is about Obamacare," he said, using a common term for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare reform law.

But some conservative House members dismissed the idea of raising the debt ceiling without extracting demands from Senate Democrats and the White House.

"I don't see any way he would get a debt ceiling passed in the House without some conditions," Rep. John Fleming, R-La., told the Journal.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement his boss "always said that the United States will not default on its debt, but if we're going to raise the debt limit, we need to deal with the drivers of our debt and deficits."

Obama has said he won't negotiate terms for raising the debt ceiling, but many Republicans have said they won't back an increase unless deficit-reduction measures or other GOP policy goals are included.

Obama cancelled a planned trip to Asia because of the government shutdown, the White House said on Thursday.

The president had been scheduled to visit Indonesia and Brunei to participate in two regional summits. Earlier in the week he had called off stops in Malaysia and the Philippines.

Secretary of State John Kerry will represent Obama at all the events, the White House said. – SAnews.gov.za-UPI

The UK government has “lost patience” with austerity, and with a general election two years away, has abandoned it in favour of a new bout of debt creation, “tempting consumers to leverage their balance sheets into a new housing bubble,” suggests Trevor Greetham of Fidelity Worldwide Investment. In the UK and other countries that gave [...]Britain Opts for a Bubble Play is a post from: Business UK



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When I started trading forex back in 2002, like most novice, home based forex traders I was actually gambling. I have never gambled in my life nor had any interest in doing so BUT I had soon developed all the bad habits of someone with a gambling habit. If you would like to know how […]

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Eskom and Agence Française de Développement (AFD) are to sign a R1.3 billion loan agreement, the power parastatal has announced. Eskom on Tuesday...

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Midrand - Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) is an integral part of South Africa’s economic policies and transformation, says President...

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French and South African companies have been encouraged to work together to ensure the industrialisation of South Africa and the African continent. Speaking at a business forum on the sidelines of the state visit by French President Francois Hollande to South Africa, Trade and Industry Minister, Dr Rob Davies, said though France was among the [...]French, SA companies encouraged is a post from: South Africa Business



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Leaders of cooperatives’ organisations from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) will gather for their third meeting in Cape Town, later this month. The meeting, which will take place between 26-27 October, is being hosted by the South African National Apex Cooperative (SANACO), in partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry (the [...]BRICS Cooperatives to meet in SA is a post from: South Africa Business



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Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu says the potential of shale gas exploration and exploitation provides an opportunity for South Africa to begin exploring the production of its own fuel and marks the beginning of the reindustrialisation of the economy.

The minister on Thursday announced that Cabinet had approved the gazetting of technical regulations on petroleum exploration and exploitation.

“The proposed regulations prescribe good international petroleum industry practices and standards, which enhance safe exploration and production of all petroleum - including, but not limited to, shale gas, and will further ensure that petroleum exploration is conducted in a socially and environmentally balanced manner,” said the minister at a briefing in Pretoria on Thursday.

She said government was satisfied that the technical regulations had sufficiently addressed recommendations contained in the investigation report for hydraulic fracturing of 2012, as well as the Cabinet directive to augment the existing regulations.

“We believe, as government, that we have acted in the best possible way, in the interests of the South African economy and its citizens, and we will continue to do so as we traverse this journey of hydraulic fracturing for the production of shale gas,” said Shabangu.

The minister explained that a technical task-team was established to investigate the socio-economic and environmental impact, as well as any associated risks of shale gas exploration and exploitation. The investigation report made specific recommendations on measures that could be taken to mitigate the environmental impact of petroleum exploitation, with specific attention to shale gas hydraulic fracturing.

The main recommendation was to ensure that South Africa’s regulatory framework was robust enough to ensure that if hydraulic fracturing associated with shale gas exploration and exploitation were approved, any resultant negative impact would be mitigated.

Also, an interdepartmental committee was put together to look at strengthening the existing regulations. A comprehensive international benchmarking exercise of well-developed jurisdictions that have begun shale gas exploitation was also undertaken.

The technical regulations provide for the assessment of the potential impact of the proposed activities on the environment; the protection of fresh water resources and mechanisms for the co-existence of shale gas exploitation and the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project, among others.

“We have a responsibility as government to ensure security of energy supply for the country, and to explore energy sources that will improve the country’s energy mix, grow the economy and contribute to job creation.

“This will also enable us to contribute to the developmental objectives and targets set out in the National Development Plan (NDP),” said Shabangu.

She said by embarking on this process of exploring the opportunities presented by hydraulic fracturing for the production of shale gas, the country was a step closer to the achievement of its objectives.

The regulations will now be gazetted for a period of 30 days for public comment. – SAnews.gov.za