Category: SA Economy

They never promised us – nor did we realistically expect – a public sector in SA that performs as well as they seemingly do in say Scandinavia. What we have in SA is however widely recognised as an almost complete failure. The government offers little defence of its current practice  – only long agendas for reform. Which raises the question – why does the SA public sector perform quite so badly?

One feature of the SA public sector deserves notice. The financial rewards it offers its officials – salaries, medical and pension benefits and secure tenure, are clearly very attractive when compared to the private sector. Such that there is very little movement from public to private employment. The regret of the government is that the limited flow of taxes has provided minimal scope for raising the numbers of teachers, nurses or humble pothole fillers. For those that have jobs are given more– in the form of regular above inflation increases in their salaries. While the hospital wards and classrooms become increasingly crowded and the roads impassable and the lights are off rather than on.

Given the superiority of public employment and given the abject failure of the economy and the labour market to absorb many more men and women of working age into formal employment, the issue of just how the favoured jobs in the public sector are allocated becomes especially important to understand.  Recruiting strictly on the merits of potential recruits is clearly not the overriding modus operandi in SA.  Observing racially prescribed quotas are one of the binding constraints. And a key performance indicator by which institutions and their leaders are measured.

ANC Cadre employment is another important objective of government employment policy. That notwithstanding the implications drawn by the Zondo Commission of Enquiry, is a practice that has not been disavowed by the President.  And yet should cadre deployment not be the overriding mission and practice of the HR specialists in government, nor merit their North Star, the tempting gap between the supply and demand for highly prized employment opportunities with governments, of all kinds and agencies in SA, is very likely to be filled by unorthodox procedures in exchange for a finder’s fee or some equivalent. The opportunity to capture some of the ongoing rents will not have escaped those with bargaining power or influence. Historically in other regimes, shop-stewards, backed by Unions with the power to strike down essential services, have exercised such powers when allocating limited and well-paid jobs as on the Docks or the construction sites or among the waste removers. Nepotism may be another description for it.  As they say nature, including homo economicus, abhors a vacuum. 

If employment in the public sector is not explained by objective measures of ability to perform important functions – by qualifications carefully vetted and by psychometric measures of potential etc objectively administered. And when advancement is based upon years of service, and not key performance indicators (KPI’s) of the kind common in the private sector, how are the officials so appointed, likely to behave, all the way up the hierarchy? As may be presumed of all in the workplace, they will behave mostly in a self-interested way.  You do get what you pay for.

Absent any link between merit, performance and reward, accepting the grave responsibility for carefully spending hard earned taxes, or of being a conscientious public servant for its own reward, is much less likely to be the outcome. Denying the capture of highly valuable contracts with government, opening the tender honestly, whistle blowing when procurement rules are flaunted, becomes essentially quixotic, even dangerous. Going the extra mile when nursing or teaching or policing all becomes much less likely.  After all, where else is the citizen to go for a permit or essential documentation, or the poor to go for schooling or medical care or protection?  They are easily treated as supplicants rather than valuable customers. Producers rather than consumer’s interest will prevail.

The case for meritorious public service is essential to the purpose of good government. Introducing much more of it in SA will however have to overcome powerful interests in the established favour and crony driven system. It will take the recognition, resentments and ultimately the votes of the victims of poor service to do so.

https://iframe.iono.fm/e/1397117

We all know that market determined prices reconcile supply and demand. Higher prices discourage demand and encourage supply. What is true of an individual price is true of all prices on average, as represented by a Consumer Price Index(CPI) That prices generally tend to rise with increased demands or reduced supplies and vice versa seems obvious enough.

Higher prices discourage demand and encourage supply. That prices generally tend to rise with increased demands or reduced supplies and vice versa seems obvious enough. But the supply and demand for all goods and services are not determined independently of each other. The supply of all goods and services produced in an economy over a year is equivalent to all the incomes earned producing the goods and services that year. The value added by all producers (GDP) is equal to all the incomes earned supplying the inputs that produce output. Incomes are received as wages, rents, interest, dividends, taxes on production and what is left over, the profits or losses for the owners after all input costs have been incurred.

Produce more, earn more and you are very likely to spend more. The economic problem, not enough of everything, too little income, is surely not the result of any reluctance to spend on the necessities or luxuries of life. The problem is we do not produce enough, earn enough income to spend really more.

Extra demands can be funded with debt. Yet for every borrower spending more than their incomes, there must be a lender saving as much. Matching financial deficits with financial surpluses, is the essential task of financial markets and financial institutions, and may not happen automatically or seamlessly. There may be times when the demand for credit and the spending associated with it may run faster or slower than the supply of savings. If so incomes and output may increase temporarily above or below long-term trends. We call that the business cycle. Interest rates (yet another price) may be temporarily too low or too high to perfectly much the supply of and demand for savings. But such imbalances must sooner or later will run up against the supply side realities, the lack of income.

There is a further complication. The supply of goods and service is augmented by imports. And demand includes demand for exports. In South Africa both imports and exports are each equivalent to about 30% of the economy, making a large difference to supply and demand. But the prices of these imports and exports are not set in South Africa. They are set in US dollars and translated into rands at highly unpredictable and generally weaker exchange rates. The prices paid for imports and exports affect average prices. And they mostly push the averages higher. It has been the case in SA of a weaker exchange rate leading, equivalent to a supply side shock, and prices following.

And the rand is still expected to depreciate against the dollar by more than the difference between SA and US inflation. The bond market expects the rand to weaken against the USD by an average 7.3% p.a. over the next ten years, being the spread between RSA bond yields (12%) and the US yield(4.7%) While the difference in inflation expected in SA (7.2% p.a.) and in the US (3.2% p.a) over the next ten years is much less, only 4.8% p.a. according to the break-even gap between vanilla bond and inflation protected bond yields.

Lenders to the SA government remain suspicious of SA’s ability to grow fast enough to raise the taxes  that could sustain fiscally responsible policies. That is the government will not avoid resorting to funding expenditure with money supplied by the central and private banks. A sure source of extra demands without extra supply that leads to ever higher prices as it does persistently in most African countries.

There is little monetary policy and short-term interest rates can do to strengthen the rand and bring inflation down further against this backdrop. That is without resulting in too little demanded and even less supplied than would be feasible. That in turn bringing  still slower growth more fiscal strain, higher borrowing costs and a still weaker rand- and higher prices.  The call is not to inhibit already depressed demand but for economic policy reforms that would stimulate the growth in SA output and incomes enough to change the outlook for fiscal policy, the exchange rate and inflation.

The group of countries that will make up the enlarged BRICS, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Suadi Arabia and the UAE have little in common other than a deep suspicion of the motives of the US and its close allies. A state of mind also shared by left wing opinion everywhere including in the US itself. If the unlikely combination of kingdoms, autocracies and genuine democracies is to become more than a another talking shop with an anti-West bias, then it should take an important lesson from the economic development of the US and Europe.

What has been of great benefit to the US and to Europe, since it established a common European market and Euro are their highly significant common currency areas.  The same money is used everywhere in the US and Europe as a medium of exchange and a unit of account. Thus unpredictable rates of exchange when buying or selling goods and services across frontiers are avoided, as are the direct costs of converting one currency into another- usually converting US dollars -into the domestic money.

Trade and financial flows between the states of the US and now of Europe is greatly encouraged by what is a fixed exchange rate regime within a common market, also free of protective of domestic industry tariffs or discrimination against foreign suppliers, by regulation. As it does incidentally when transactions of one kind or another take place within any country. The important trade between Gauteng and the Western Cape for example is facilitated by prices set in the rand common to both.

In the nineteenth century when which international trade and finance first flourished and economies came to benefit from wider markets for their goods and labour, and the ability to realise productivity and income enhancing economies of scale, currencies were mostly linked by fixed rates of exchange.  The link was the ability to convert the different monies, if necessary, into gold at a fixed rate. And the issuers of different monies made sure to maintain convertibility by protecting their balance of payments through adjusting domestic interest rates. If gold generally flowed out interest rates could be raised to conserve and attract gold reserves and vice versa. Provided the commitment to currency convertibility was fully credible, the extra interest received would balance the payments by attracting or retaining capital.

A modified fixed exchange rate system was re-established after the second world war with the US dollar as the reserve currency- but dollars that could be converted into gold at the request of other central banks. This commitment was abandoned unilaterally by the US in 1971 and market determined exchange rates, with the still dominant US dollar, became the norm. Highly variable rather than predictably fixed exchange rates have become the unsatisfactory order of the day. The rates of exchange of other currencies with the dollar, both in money of the day terms and when adjusted for differences in inflation of different currencies have varied very significantly – and unpredictably- damaging volumes of international trade and real investments.

US Dollar Exchange Rate Index. Market Determined and Inflation Adjusted

Source; Bloomberg, Federal Reserve Bank of St.Louis and Investec Wealth and Investment

It has not been a case of exchange rate moves levelling the playing field for traders in goods and services- so maintaining purchasing power parity in the face of differences in inflation rates across trading partners. Rather the exchange rates have adjusted to equilibrate independent flows of capital – large and reversible flows – in search of better risk adjusted rates of return- to which inflation then responds. Weaker exchange rates lead to more inflation and vice versa. Without stable exchange rates, controlling inflation in the face of capital withdrawals and a suddenly weaker exchange rate with the US dollar can become a severe interest rate burden on the domestic economy – as South Africa demonstrates.

The enlarged BRICS could establish fixed exchange rates between each other to promote trade and investment. They might usefully adopt a Chinese standard- that is offer convertibility of their own currencies into Renminbi at fixed rates. And rely on the Bank of China to manage the float of the crucial rate of exchange of Renminbi into US dollars, as it now does.

Peter Bruce has pointed to something in the Stellenbosch water of the late sixties and seventies that produced so many rand billionaires. They would not have been inspired by some professor of economics enthusiastic about the power of free markets telling them to do good for the nation by getting rich. They are much more likely to have been told the opposite. Told why markets will not work nearly well enough and that any faith in entrepreneurial flair would be entirely misplaced. I have yet to meet a Stellenbosch economist who believes that an economy is best left guided by the forces of competition.

And one can perhaps understand why. The interventionist economic policies, long adopted in SA before 1994, clearly helped to completely transform the economic and educational status of the Afrikaner nation, in a generation, both absolutely and comparatively. They might have done even better with freer markets, but this would not have been self-evident. By every measure, the Afrikaner, on average lagged well behind the standards enjoyed by the average English speaker in the nineteen thirties. By the sixties they had caught up. Even, as the average incomes of both communities had improved significantly.

Many of the best and brightest Maties sought their futures working for the state and its agencies. The case for ownership by the state of some of the commanding heights of the economy, steel, electricity, railways and ports was taken as a given and not contended. And they were not, with few exceptions, seen as the path to private riches through corrupted procurement and biased tenders to which SOE’s are so conspicuously vulnerable.  Nationalism and strong sense of community may have had something to do with this restraint.

Perhaps with Johan Rupert a fellow student, the example of the ineffable Anton Rupert was the inspiration. He who went door to door selling shares in his fledgling enterprise that was to take down a powerful near monopoly of the cigarette market in SA. The billions of the Stellenbosch cohort, like those of the Ruperts, were made in a conventional way.  By competing successfully with established businesses for their customers and executing better combined with intelligent financial engineering that is always the leveraged and risky path to great wealth. Taking the opportunity provided by contestable markets is characteristic of successful, dynamic economies.

Peter Bruce is quite wrong to assert (Business Day July 27^th) That Stellies route to billions is gone — and it’s undesirable. Apartheid-era billionaires can’t be reproduced in today’s democratic conditions.

It would be highly desirable were the South African economy to produce a few more billionaires in a similar old-fashioned way. By taking on established interests, winning market share and reviving businesses that have lost their way and are now valued at far below what can be regarded as their replacement cost. With the help of value adding, better designed financial structures and appropriate incentives for managers based on what really matters, return on all capital employed. It seems to me the opportunity to acquire great wealth in rands and dollars is as open, perhaps more open than it has ever been given current market pessimism.

The aspirant billionaire will not have to rob the taxpayer to get rich – though it is still unfortunately the most obvious route. Yet more than a few new billionaires are hard at work proving my point that Bruce may not have noticed from his rural retreat.

Though admittedly a billion rand today is a lower target, worth a lot less than a billion in 2000 – about 35% as much, after SA inflation. To compare purchasing power in US dollars, you might do as the IMF does – divide billions of rands by 7 not 19 to convert SA GDP into purchasing power dollar equivalents. If the rand just compensated for differences in SA and US inflation since 2000, a dollar would cost R13.5 and a billion rand would buy the equivalent of USD74m – more than nickels and dimes.

The exchange value of the Rand (USD/ZAR) and its purchasing power equivalent

There is a certain balance of payments (BOP) outcome.  That the dollar payments and dollar receipts in the currency market will strictly balance over any period- an hour, day quarter or year. The exchange rate and interest rates will continuously adjust to make it so- to equalize supply and demand for dollars and other currencies traded. And it is a very good idea for the authorities not to intervene in or attempt to influence this market determined exchange rate with interest rate adjustments. Or to directly control demands for or supplies of foreign currencies to achieve a temporarily better, perhaps less inflationary rate of exchange. A shadow market will emerge to siphon off undervalued dollars, leading to an official scarcity of dollars. Making it very difficult to do normal helpful income enhancing business across the frontiers and discouraging to foreign investment so important to any economy. As MTN knows only to well from its experience in Nigeria.

Another BOP relationship will also always hold. The current account of the BOP- that measures payments and receipts for imports, exports and the flows of dividends and interest paid or received by South Africans, will always be matched equally and oppositely by what are measured as flows of capital over the exchanges. A current account deficit will always be matched by a capital account surplus of the same amount and vice versa. There is no cause-and-effect relationship implied by this identity.  The current account does not determine the capital flows – any more than the capital flows determine net flows of foreign trade, interest, and dividend payments. It is an accounting identity.

The capital and current accounts- an identity, identified.

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

Over most years the current account of the SA balance of payments has been in deficit. Exports of goods and services almost always exceed imports – generating a consistently positive balance of trade (BOT)  While the deficit on what might be described as the asset service account, dividends and interest payments, almost always exceeds dividend and interest received by enough to exceed the positive BOT. The interest and dividend yields on SA liabilities much exceeds the dividend and interest yield on SA assets held abroad. But between 2020 and 2022 South Africa ran current account surpluses and exported capital on a significant scale. So much so that the market value of SA assets held offshore now exceeds that of the market value of foreign owned assets in SA. This was not good for the South African economy.

There is a National Income Accounting Identity to help make the point. The current account deficit also equates to the difference between Aggregate Incomes that are equal to Aggregate Output (GDP) and Total Expenditure on final goods and services (GDE) It is also by definition the difference between Gross Savings and Gross Capex. Post Covid, Gross Savings, almost all in the form of cash retained by the corporate sector, held up better than Capex and capital – from a capital starved economy – flowed out.

South Africa, Gross Savings and Capital Formation – Ratio to GDP – Annual Data, Current Prices

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

South African Non-Financial Corporations; Cash from Operations Retained and Net Lending (+) or Borrowing (-) Annual Data

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

South Africa; Gross Savings and the Composition of Capital Expenditure by Private and Publicly Owned Corporations

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

South Africa;  Inflows and Outflows of Capital; Direct and Portfolio Investment. Quarterly 2022-2023

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

All Capital Flows to and from South Africa;  Quarterly Data (2022.1 2023.1)

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

SA; Total Foreign Assets and Liabilities;  Direct and Portfolio Investments and Yield

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

SA Foreign Investment Income (Dividends + Interest) Annual Data

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

South Africa; Gross Savings Annual Data (R millions)

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

Both the ratio of Gross Savings – and Capex to GDP can be regarded as unsatisfactorily low in SA. The opportunity to raise the savings rate seems limited, given low average incomes. However, the opportunity to raise the rate of capex to GDP and to attract foreign capital to fund income growth encouraging capex and the accompanying larger current account deficits is always open. SA must be able to offer faster growth and the accompanying higher expected returns, to attract more foreign capital and to retain a greater share of domestic savings.

Supply side reforms are urgently needed for the SA economy. We all know what they are. Demand will keep up with supply automatically. Extra Supply – extra incomes earned producing more goods and services- creates its own demands. Yet until the economy can deliver more growth and better returns, the best we can do with our savings is to invest them abroad. (including buying shares of companies listed on the JSE that do almost all of their business outside the SA economy) Without such opportunities, the pension and retirement funds, upon which we depend for our future income, would be in a truly parlous state.

There was no good reason for the Reserve Bank to have surprised with a 50 basis point increase in its repo rate. There is in fact no good reason at all to subject the beleaguered SA economy to any further increases in interest rates. Given the bank’s own assessment of the state of the economy. To quote the statement of the Monetary Policy Committee of the 30^th March. “Turning to inflation prospects, our current growth forecasts leaves the output gap around zero, implying little positive or negative pressures on inflation from expected growth”. The output gap is the estimated difference between potential growth in the economy (the supply side) and the growth in demand expected. The expectations for both growth in demand and supply are depressingly slow- no more than 1% p.a. over the next two years.. But clearly there are no demand side pressures on the price level.

The Bank’s forecasting model indicates that every 1 per cent shock to the repo rate will reduce GDP growth by 0.17% on an annual basis with the peak impact two or three quarters after the interest rate shock. While inflation is predicted to decline by 0.12% two years after the shock. While these are the estimated impact of higher or lower interest rates, other things equal, other things are very likely to change in highly unpredictable ways. For example exchange rates, or food prices or electricity tariffs or export prices- supply side shocks – over which the Reserve Bank has no control, nor any superior ability to predict. And which are as likely to move higher or lower over the forecast period and therefore should be ignored when setting interest rates. The strong focus of policy attention should be on the demand side of the economy- on the potential output gap over which the Bank does exercise influence. And without excess demand price increases cannot continue in an ever-higher direction- irrespective of recent inflation. Why the Bank would risk even slower growth by imposing still higher short term interest rates is hard to appreciate.

Since its January meeting the Bank, by no means alone, has been surprised by global inflation, by food prices, by rand weakness etc, enough to have taken recent headline inflation rates above what was predicted at earlier meetings. Though the longer term expected trend in headline inflation remains as it was – pointing distinctly lower below the targeted band. Incidentally the core inflation rate that excludes energy and food prices – large supply side shocks – has behaved almost exactly as expected. All further reason to have stood pat.

SA Headline Inflation. Actual and forecast by the Reserve Bank

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

SA Core Inflation. Actual and forecast by the Reserve Bank

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

There is perhaps more to the decision to raise interest rates than the usual focus on prices. The MPC statement and the Q&A session after the meeting cast unusual concern about the foreign financing needs of the SA economy. To quote the MPC statement again – “South Africa’s external financing needs are expected to rise. With a sharply lower export commodity price index, stable oil prices and somewhat weaker growth in export volumes, the current account balance is forecast to deteriorate to a deficit of 2.7% of GDP for the next three years. Weaker commodity prices and higher sate-owned enterprise financing needs will put pressure on financing conditions for rand-denominated bonds. Ten-year bond yields currently trade at about 11.2%, despite the expected moderation of inflation over the forecast period”

It therefore appears to me that higher interest rates to attract foreign capital interest rates may have played a decisive role in the MPC decision. The rand and the long end of the bond market did benefit from a wider interest rate spread in a modest way.  But such experiments in exchange rate management are surely not to be recommended, given all else that can happen to exchange rates.  I thought we have learned (expensively) to leave exchange rates and long-term interest rates to sort out balance of payments flows – and yet still to learn to set interest rates with the domestic economy front of mind.

RSA 10 year bond yields and the USDZAR – before and after the decision to raise the repo rate by 50 b.p.

The demise of Silicone Valley Bank (SVB) the 15^th largest US bank, with an important systemic role in the roll out of US Tech happened quickly. In less than 24 hours it was all over for shareholders as the regulators took over to prevent banking contagion. By offering insurance not only on the deposits of all denominations of SVB, but effectively on all deposits with US banks, should it be needed.

It was not a run on the banking system – depositors were not lining up to cash in their deposits- as they might have done in primitive times before. They were acting online, transferring their deposits as quickly as they could to their accounts with the banking behemoths JP Morgan, and their like.  As the venture capitalists and their many subsidiary companies did with their deposits with SVB,

It was clear what caused the panic withdrawal of deposits from SVB. It was a sudden loss in the share market value of SVB to which the depositors acted as they did. They may not have known what was going on but they took fright. It is the market value of a company and its capital raising potential that protects creditors and this protection had fallen away. For reasons that had everything to do with decisions taken by SVB itself on surely very poor advice, that investors in SVB had recognized as destroying the market value of SVB.

The problem for SVB and other banks was that the fixed interest rate yield on their essentially sound  assets had been  rising steadily, causing their values to decline, even as the interest rates paid on deposits were edging higher in response to Fed tightening. Accordingly, the net interest income earned by the banks and their earnings per share were in decline.  A trend clearly uncomfortable to earnings conscious and presumably earnings growth incentivized managers of SVB.  

The advice was to mark the portfolio to market values, and recognize the capital losses on the balance sheet. To raise additional share capital in the market to restore required capital to asset ratios and to invest the capital in higher yielding government and other securities. By so doing improving net interest income and the earnings outlook and the share price.

There was no regulatory compulsion to recognize the losses on their portfolio. The alternative was to have let the assets run off as they became due and to accept the consequent decline in earnings for the next three years or so and the possibly negative reactions of the capital market to a well understood and unavoidable economic reality. There would then have been no need to raise additional capital.

The capital market would surely have been capable of seeing beyond the decline in earnings and focused on the inherent quality of the SVB balance sheet and its potentially durable business model. The problem for SVB was that the capital market clearly did not think that the proposed plans for the balance sheet made good sense and that two billion dollars of extra capital required could be raised on reasonable terms.  Doubts that put pressure on the share price that undermined the possibility of raising the additional capital.

The protection in the form of market value for depositors and shareholders in SVB and beyond fell away dramatically and the bank went down. All because of a false belief in managing earnings per share and the failure to recognize how companies are properly appreciated and valued on the share market. Concerns that extend well beyond the short-term prospects for accounting earnings. Adjusting wisely to Covid 19 and its aftermaths has proved difficult enough for the great growth companies with the strong balance sheets. It is even more difficult for banks, with high degrees of leverage, to wisely adjust their balance sheets in such unpredictable circumstances. SVB clearly failed to do so.

Published Business Day March 10^th 2023

Makawber’s principles apply to National as well as household budgets. Expenditure less than revenue equals happiness. Expenditure that consistently exceeds income brings misery. Iin the form of ever rising and more expensive levels of debt, the service of which takes an ever-larger share of the revenue collected and of all expenditure.  Paying interest and repaying capital maintains your credit rating -more or less-  it does not buy votes.

South Africa has been on this spendthrift path, without pause, ever since the Global Financial Crisis. Since fiscal year 2008-09 to date real government expenditure has grown by an average 3.2% p.a. Government revenues have lagged, growing by an average 2% p.a. after inflation. This extra 1.2% of spending makes a large difference to debt levels over time. Real GDP has grown by an immiserating 1.2% p.a. average since 2009.

Government debt net of cash was a manageable R483.2b in 2007/8 and equivalent to 20% of GDP. The net debt this past financial year is nearly ten times higher at R4483b and equivalent to over 67% of GDP. Servicing this debt took 8.8% of all government revenue in 2008-09. This share of revenue grew consistently to 18.8% in Covid year 2021 as revenues collapsed with the lockdowns. This depressing ratio fell back to 17.1% in 2021/22 as the inflationary comeback from Covid brought hundreds of billions of extra unexpected taxes from SA mining companies. A mixed blessing as these companies remained reluctant to invest more in SA and so paid more tax.

Not only did the volume of debt incurred rise, but interest rates both paid by the government and by private borrowers also rose well ahead of inflation to compensate investors in SA government and private debt for the dangerous trajectory of our debt. Such trends could easily be extrapolated into a debt crisis and be expected to do so. That if not corrected could lead to a desperate eventual resort to the central bank as a lender of last resort and its money printing press. That is to a default by inflating away the real value of the debts incurred. A not uncommon event in monetary history of the world.

The 2023-04 Budget has made an essential, praiseworthy attempt to reverse the direction of spending and revenue. Over the next three years all government spending is planned to grow by 8.5%, and more slowly than government revenue which is expected to increase by 10.4%. The extra borrowing, the fiscal deficit would then decline from the current 4.2% of GDP to 3.2% by 2025/06 despite very modest expected growth in GDP. If the plans materialize, the debt to GDP ratio will stabilize in the low 70% range and the debt service ratio will be contained below 20% of all revenues. A path to fiscal sustainability has been opened.

The issue of how well or badly the government spends the money collected or borrowed and then allocated across the spending departments and state sponsored enterprises, and how onerous is the tax regime, clearly influence economic growth. Fiscal responsibility of the kind, hopefully to be demonstrated, almost balancing the books, is vitally necessary for economic stability but is not sufficient to the purpose of faster economic growth. It is the larger task for government to get value for taxpayers income it extracts.

The economic dust seldom settles in South Africa. The Budget was soon overtaken by De Ruyter’s last stand. Yet judged by the muted reactions in the financial markets the Budget did little to change what we pay to raise capital, public and private. RSA 5 year bonds still yield well over 9% p.a. or a very expensive real 5% p.a. after expected inflation of 5.5% p.a. Judged by the difference between RSA and USA Bonds, the rand is still expected to weaken – by a punishing 5% p.a. over the next five years and about 7% a year on average over the next 10 years.  SA dollar denominated, 5 year debt, now yields 6.56% p.a. representing a default risk premium of 2.3% p.a. and more than double investors in Mexican debt pay for the same insurance. Clearly the market and the economy need much more convincing that we have permanently changed our ways.

Measures of SA Risk; Daily Data 2022- 2023.

Source; Bloomberg and Investec Wealth and Investment

Nostalgia has its comforts. But looking ahead rather than behind
may be the better New Year resolution. Especially for those with
the responsibility for directing a business enterprise. It is best for
them to move on from the inevitable mistakes they have made in
business or in life. To not throw good money after bad to avoid
embarrassment. Not to not sell off the best divisions to sustain the
underperformers with capital they should better be starved of.
Do as Woolworths did with David Jones – but do it much faster.
And change the seriously erring CEO and the Board members
who supported them sooner rather than later. Furthermore, do not
encumber the strong operating managers with the capital that was
once wasted overpaying for acquisitions. The poor deals and the
waste of shareholders capital were not their mistakes.
Yet they may be doing very well operating the plant and
equipment handed to them and need recognition and
encouragement accordingly. Therefore, the firm should
accurately estimate the current market value of the plant and
equipment they are held responsible for. And reward them when
they achieve returns on this capital that exceeds required returns,
the opportunity cost of the capital employed. The investors who
value the business will, as managers should, look forward and
estimate expected returns based on current market values – and
will add or subtract based on expected not past performance.
The future is for every business and every individual to prepare
for. The technology for dramatically improving the productivity of

capital is available for you and your competitors. If only you or
they knew better how to serve your key stakeholder, the
customer, they will attempt to do so expecting to add market
value for their owners. The future will be theirs that succeed.
Frustrated South African customers of the state-owned
enterprises know that they operate to serve other stakeholders,
not their customers. Other KPI’s are much more important. Most
obviously to serve the interest of their employees or suppliers
without regard for the bottom line. What will the future bring for
this operating model that so clearly fails to deliver to customers?
The obvious solution is to introduce incentives for them based on
the same return on capital criteria that makes private business so
customer friendly. Is this politically possible?
The pace of technology may well be accelerating and its
outcomes ever more uncertain. And a source of ever greater
anxiety to the bosses and their teams. Ours seems a less happy
era. Maybe technology is to blame. Yet there is also a business
imperative to apply technology, 1 to improve the resilience and
reduce the dissonance of the workforce, so enhancing
productivity and competitiveness.
The evidence from working from home, made possible by
improved technology, is very suggestive about what the future of
work may hold. It suggests that the future will be one of fewer
hours worked, including fewer (highly unproductive) hours getting
to and from the workplace. Fewer hours worked because
improved technology enables more output produced and
therefore more income per (fewer) hours worked required to
satisfy the necessities of life and more time to play or bring up the
children. If collaboration at the work-place is valuable – because it

makes the firm more innovative and competitive – the
representative firm may therefore have to pay more, as well as
give more time off, to get key workers to come to the office. And
for those who much prefer to work from home and are therefore
less productive, may well accept lower hourly rewards to do so.
The challenge for all will be to find meaning in life. A strong sense
of vocation, of finding purpose and satisfaction in work for its own
sake, as well as for what it may buy, including time-off will remain
as helpful as ever.

Brian Kantor

28^th September 2022

The Covid lockdowns has quite dramatically altered the relationships between the South African economy and its global trading and financial partners. What followed Covid was a dramatic improvement in the balance of exports and imports. After 2020 exports, helped by higher prices, grew significantly faster than imports to take the balance of trade to a mammoth, nearly 10% of GDP by Q2 2021. As export prices have fallen off more recently the trade surplus has declined to a still impressive 4.8% of GDP in Q2 2022.

The difference between exports and imports is also the difference between GDP- output or equivalently incomes – earned producing that output – and Gross Domestic Expenditure –mostly on consumption by households and  partially on capital goods by firms – that can be funded with loans to supplement current incomes. The trade balance – when positive -represents an excess of local supply over local demands- a contributor to global supply chains- rather than a drawer or absorber of them.  The SA economy has thus helped dampen global inflation.

The closely watched current account of the balance of payments adds foreign mostly investment income to the trade balance. South African borrowers and capital raisers pay out interest and dividends at  higher rates and yields than they typically receive from their foreign investments. Even though South African’s foreign assets roughly match their foreign liabilities (thanks to Naspers and its Ten Cent investment) This force usually turns trade surpluses into current account deficits – being the sum of the trade balance and the net foreign income accounts.   

By definition of the balance of payments accounting system the current account deficits (or surpluses) are equal to foreign capital inflows or outflows. Instead of drawing on global capital markets to fund its capital expenditure budgets South African savers- almost all realized by its corporations to offset very marginal surpluses of the household sector and public sector deficits, became a significant source of savings for world capital markets. Instead of drawing on global capital markets to fund capital expenditure budgets we became a significant source of savings for world capital markets- some 300 billion rands worth since Covid. The current account is now in rough balance.

The trade balance, the current account and net foreign income. South African Balance of Payments Statistics. Quarterly Data

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

Rather a lender than a borrower is conventionally good news for balance sheets and credit ratings- – provided all else remains the same.  Ideally raising capital even debt – to spend on capital goods with long productive lives that earn above the cost of debt- is good for any company or government and all its dependents. It means faster growth- and faster growth is the key to attract capital – especially equity capital – on favourable risk adjusted terms. Though the influence of removing one of the SA deficits, the capital account deficit – and improving the fiscal deficit, also with the help of the exporters, has not been conspicuous in the market for rands. The exchange rate of the ZAR with the USD, as for all other currencies, is being dominated  by the dollar and the actions of the US Fed.

There is a dark side to South Africa’s lesser dependence on foreign capital. The reason the SA trade balance has improved as much as it has is because the rate at which South African’s have saved since Covid disrupted incomes and output has held up much better than the rate at which the economy has added to its capital stock. The ratio of Capital Expenditure to GDP has very worryingly continued to decline – from the 20% of GDP range before 2016 to the current 14% of GDP rate. The savings rate appears to have stabilized at the 14% rate.

These capital expenditure trends portend very poorly for the economy. They imply persistently slow growth that will continue to threaten the ability of the SA government to raise revenues to fund its ambitious welfare programmes. Slow growth adds to the risk of investing in SA and the cost of raising capital from all sources domestic and foreign. It means less capital expenditure and slower growth. Ideally South Africa should be raising its capital expenditure rate and funding more of it by attracting foreign capital on favourable terms, growing faster by reducing the risk premium with appropriate actions. Current account deficits and capital inflows to fund growth would then be very welcome.

The trade balance and the difference between savings and capital expenditure. Quarterly Data

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

Savings and Capital Expenditure. Ratio to GDP. Quarterly Data

Source; SA Reserve Bank and Investec Wealth and Investment

Ask not what you can do for the boss. Ask what your boss can do for you

An earlier study of the returns from investing in the best companies (BCs) to work for, as revealed by their employees, has been replicated with very similar results – as reported in the recent Financial Analysts Journal. An index of US companies that best satisfy their employees, would have provided market beating returns over an extended period to 2020, on average a meaningful extra 2-3% p.a. over the long run. Incidentally a similar methodology applied to selected groups of companies with very good ESG qualifications revealed slightly inferior returns. It is understandable why investors might have paid up for companies to feel better about themselves. Less obvious is why investors have so conspicuously spurned the advantages of investing in companies that are so well appreciated by their employees.

A different relationship between the causes and effects of companies that best satisfy their employees may explain the observed outcomes. It is the economic and financial performance of the best companies surveyed that perhaps explains their superior status with employees more than the other way round. The better the economic performance of a company, the better the company will be able and willing to look after their managers and workers and win their trust.

The same many hours devoted with the same energy and skills to a struggling business, are very likely to provide very inferior rewards over a lifetime of work. Promotion and training opportunities will be more limited. Initiatives to encourage self-improvement of the workforce will be unaffordable and the job itself will be much less secure. Bonuses and share option schemes that come with success and that make climbing the slippery corporate ladders so attractive will be largely absent.

It turns out that the best companies to work for are also unusually successful when measured by the other criteria for performance. To quote the study, “Overall, the main takeaway from these statistics is that BCs are rarely tiny-cap stocks, they are typically large, and a few are extremely large companies…… , we also see that, on average, BCs have relatively high market-to-book ratios of 12.44 and gross-profit-to-total-assets ratios of 38%, and that BCs spend relatively little on capital expenditures (4% of revenue) and have relatively large amounts of intangibles in their balance sheet (22% of total assets)….. BCs are large companies, with an average (median) market capitalization of $55bn. This shows that BCs tend to be large companies and the size distribution is skewed to the right….”

Most large companies were small to begin with and size is a measure of their success- able to sustain better still to improve their returns on additional capital employed. Such achievements characterize the true growth companies well worth being an early investor or employee in. The ideal business to invest in or work for would be a start-up that grows rapidly and becomes large and consistently successful on all dimensions. Perhaps what the list of BC’s – that change significantly from year to year- about 20% enter and leave the lists annually – include a biased sample of surprisingly successful companies- revealed in part by their superior employment practice. The best run companies are priced for success and therefore returns realized may not beat the share market. The surprisingly improved companies will do so. Identifying surprising strength before other investors do is the holy grail of investors and indeed also of workers with choices to make.

The key success factor in any business are the capabilities of its senior managers and directors. The employed insiders are in a very good position to evaluate them. The transfer market can serve those with competitive and marketable skills as well as it does in football should they have reason to doubt their leaders. Moreover, as they do in football, they should not resent the high rewards received by the best executors, the true and rare superstars that create and preserve so much value for workers and shareholders and as important for their valued customers.