BEE Partner, South Africa Economy Watch

Targets

Achievement of the allocated points is based on the measured entity reaching the compliance targets. The compliance targets in this element are fairly ambitious because very few suppliers will have a decent BEE status level, particularly in the early stages of this policy. The Codes accounted for this by splitting the compliance targets from years 0 to 5 with a target of 40% and years 6 to 10 with a target of 50%. The QSE targets are substantially lower than those provided in the generic scorecard. Read the rest of this entry »

All capital expenditure, including fixed property, is included in the total measured procurement spend.

Fixed property was predominantly white owned at the effective date of the Codes. Unless fixed property is part of normal trade, buying a property is going to result in an abnormal total measured procurement spend for that year. The purchase will distort the real procurement intentions of a business, which it may perceive as being unfair. However, because procurement is only measured on an annual basis, it will not have a prolonged impact on the measured entity’s preferential procurement scorecard. Read the rest of this entry »

The Codes use enterprise development as a secondary driver for encouraging BEE contributions. Becoming a beneficiary for enterprise development is attractive to any business because it means other BEE contributors may invest their enterprise development contributions in that qualifying business.

Qualifying contributions are not restricted to Black-owned businesses. By allowing a white-owned business that achieves a substantial BEE score to qualify as an enterprise development beneficiary, it is argued that this would encourage the facilitation of Black ownership in the white businesses through financing mechanisms. Read the rest of this entry »

The problem in most organisations seems to be that value innovation is kept at the corporate level and does not permeate the entire organisation. Employees need to see themselves as a critical resource in the job that they do, not just for the organisation, but also for themselves. Put simply, if an organisation creates an environment in which value innovation is encouraged and rewarded, the participating individual’s self-worth will improve, which in turn will have a positive spin-off on job satisfaction, job involvement, and, ultimately, customer satisfaction and loyalty. Read the rest of this entry »

The endogenous determination of the interest rate

In a boom, banks will lend more and will seek to create new deposits or issue additional notes. To support these activities, they will have to attract additional reserves. This will lead them to bid up interest rates, as they seek to attract idle reserves from one another and from hoards. In a slump, they will issue less and lend less, and will seek to shed reserves, lowering interest rates. In other words, while long-term average rates are determined by costs and competition, current interest rates reflect the balance of supply and demand in the market. They move pro-cyclically.

This is illustrated by a simple model. On the one hand, the rate of interest (in relation to the rate of profit), is likely to affect investment inversely, and investment, in turn, will have an impact on prices and employment. Changes in prices and employment will call for changes in reserves. Read the rest of this entry »

The idea behind the Phillips Curve is that higher inflation is associated with lower unemployment, and vice versa. Intuitively, this seems plausible enough. The stronger the economy, the more business is booming, the more jobs there will be. So we can expect the rate of unemployment to be lower. Indeed, it may fall to a point where shortages of various labor skills begin to emerge. In general, the more the economy is booming, the more likely there are to be shortages and inflationary pressures. By the same token, in a slump, excess labor and excess capacity will reduce inflationary pressures, and may even lead in some areas to price cutting. Read the rest of this entry »

This stagnation tendency, the growing savings gap, has often been viewedas a problem. But why should one look at it that way? Isn’t the gap really a big resource? Should it not be encouraged? For the bigger the gap, the greater the scope for deficit financing of public spending. Indeed, the graver the stagnationist tendencies of the private sector, the lower the taxes can go, and the greater the scope for public borrowing and a growing debt. Instead of encouraging private spending as a remedy for stagnation, should we not promote private saving to widen the savings gap? For by so doing, we could deficit finance all the more, and enjoy the supply-side benefits of reduced taxation. Read the rest of this entry »

A necessary practical condition is that the government share of GDP be limited, that is — in the case of European welfare states — be cut back. This need not involve any reductions of the volume and quality of services provided by the government sector. If aggregate supply is relatively elastic with respect to the level of taxation, then tax cuts may provide for a great expansion of the private sector. A vigorously growing private sector will tend to reduce the share of the public sector in the economy, a reduction that might render unnecessary any actual cutbacks of the real size of government. Read the rest of this entry »