BRICS News

The lockdown has been extended to the end of April from 16 April.
Mobile clinics were testing people with symptoms in both the poor and richer areas
President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered an extension to the national 21-day lockdown that started on 27 March despite the fact that the containment measures first announced by the South African government on 15 March, a mere 10 days after the first coronavirus case had been reported, had been able to “flatten the curve”.

Issue will fund the RMB 7 billion ($990 million) Coronavirus assistance loan granted to China in March
Premier Li Keqiang played a large role in China’s continuing COVID-19 recovery [PPIO]The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) on April 2 successfully issued a 3-year RMB 5 billion Coronavirus Combating Bond in the China Interbank Bond Market. The NDB said the bond attracted interest worth more than RMB 15 billion from a high-quality diversified investor base both onshore in mainland China, as well as offshore.

Covid-19 cases exceed 1,000, faster pace than Italy or China in first 20 days

As of March 27, 2020, at 2:00 PM EST, there are over 565,000 infection cases of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus discovered in December 2019, in the world. The number of global fatalities due to the virus has surpassed 26,000.

Due to lower inflation forecast and expected recession
The National Treasury building in Pretoria [PREUSS]The South African Reserve Bank’s (SARB) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) took the unanimous decision to cut the repo rate by 100 basis points to 5.25 per cent in response due to lower inflation forecast as a result of the collapse in oil prices in March, as well as a forecast recession caused by the global response to the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak.

Load shedding however meant that production could not keep up
The bad news from a government revenue point of view is that the nominal growth in GDP, on which taxes are based, eased to 4.2 per cent in 2019 from 4.7 per cent in 2018 [PREUSS]

“Our economy has won before, and it will win again” –  Finance Minister Tito Mboweni Budget Speech February 2020
“This Budget is about cleaning up our house,” Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said
In his briefing to journalists before his Budget Speech, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni pointed out that preparing a Budget Speech was an iterative process, as he would propose certain things and his team would either accept or reject them. In the event, the speech that was given to journalists was labelled version 10.

“This will help close the energy gap caused by deteriorating Eskom plant performance,” says Gwede Mantashe.
Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe told delegates at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town that government would allow mining companies to produce energy for their own use.
“This will help close the energy gap caused by deteriorating Eskom plant performance. Depending on the circumstances, the generation plant may only require registration and not licensing,” Mantashe said.

Demand expected to decline by 3 million tonnes (Mt), but it could drop by 20 Mt

South Africa is the world’s second largest exporter of citrus