Employers are urged to hire young, inexperienced job searchers through the Employment Tax Incentive, remarked President Cyril Ramaphosa during his recent State of the Nation Address.

A cost-sharing arrangement with the government will lower the employers’ costs to hire young people while maintaining the basic wage parameters.

The employer may claim the total Employment Tax Incentive calculated for all qualified employees, which will lower the Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) tax due. On January 1st, 2014, this incentive went into effect.

“Our economy has grown more recently than it did before the pandemic. Around 1.5 million additional employment were added to our economy during the third quarters of 2021 and 2022,” President Cyril Ramaphosa noted.

He mentioned that more than a million people had received employment and income prospects due to the Presidential Employment Stimulus.

“Last year, we discussed how important the Presidential Employment Stimulus is for creating employment and income prospects. Every province and area in our nation has now benefited from the initiative’s creation of more than one million opportunities,” he claimed.

A new group of 150,000 school assistants has also begun working at more than 22,000 educational institutions within the country since February 2023.

President Cyril Ramaphosa also declared that the country’s Social Employment Fund is seeking 50,000 members for its upcoming labour phase for the common good.

The revitalised National Youth Service will create 36,000 job possibilities in South Africa through nonprofit and community-based organisations.

The Department of Home Affairs has also hired the first batch of 10,000 young South Africans to digitise over 340 million paper-based civic records.

“SAYouth.mobi, a zero-rated online platform enabling young South Africans to access chances for learning and earning, now has more than three million registered members,” President Cyril Ramaphosa stated, while claiming that the National Youth Development Agency, which continues to offer assistance to young entrepreneurs and job seekers, was closely involved in the process.

President Cyril Ramaphosa also claimed that the ‘Presidential Employment Stimulus’ is helping people sustain their ability to make a living independently.

Approximately 140,000 small-scale farmers have been given input coupons to purchase seeds, fertiliser, and equipment, advancing agricultural reform and food security.

About 640,000 hectares of land have been cultivated as a result of this initiative. According to President Cyril Ramaphosa, 68% of these farmers are women.

He also talked about the government’s plans of giving 250,000 extra vouchers to small-scale farmers by 2023 end.

“These are illustrations of how innovation, ingenuity, and dedication on the part of the government can improve the lives of citizens,” he remarked.

“This year, the National Skills Fund will provide R800m through an innovative model that links payment for training to employment outcomes to develop skills in the digital and technology sector,” President Cyril Ramaphosa added.

President Cyril Ramaphosa also reaffirmed his government’s demand of businesses and departments to drop the condition of young people seeking entry-level positions to have work experience.

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They have not found a single buyer because vaccine distribution in Africa is a lumbering process, leaving many health agencies with a backlog of supplies. According to Bloomberg, Aspen has not got a single order for their branded version of the J&J injection due to a lack of demand — even in Africa, where only 15.9% of its 1.2 billion people have completed a coronavirus vaccine course.

Stavros Nicolaou, Aspen’s head of strategic trade, said that many people in the West and Africa have said that the best approach to fix the situation is to build our local vaccine production capability.

Bloomberg has further quoted that in the fall of 2020, Aspen had signed a partnership agreement with J&J to assist in the development of their coronavirus vaccine candidate. Aspen has started training roughly 500 workers to operate on the COVID vaccination line at its sterile facility in Gqeberha, South Africa, in early 2021.

In March, Aspen came into a lucrative arrangement for its branded version of the shot, Aspenovax. The agreement also granted business pricing and distribution control across Africa.

Nicolaou told Fierce Pharma in late 2021 that the purchase had the potential to be a ‘game-changer’ on two fronts. According to the CEO, an Aspen-branded shot would de facto offer the continent its first COVID-19 vaccine. Second, he believes the agreement will help Africa create local vaccine manufacturing capability. However, commercial production has not begun and is an ominous sign for African countries and vaccine manufacturers.

President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking at a Pandemic global summit organized by the White House, blamed international agencies for failure to buy vaccines from a pioneering African manufacturer.

Studies have found that 2/3rd of Africans caught a covid infection before the Omicron wave, yet death rates in the continent are the lowest worldwide. Vaccine wait times have also driven down demand, and public health officials are on the verge of abandoning large-scale vaccination drives to focus instead on the most vulnerable groups.

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The proposed sovereign wealth fund of South Africa will be a state-owned investment fund investing in financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate and precious metals. It also includes alternative investments such as private equity funds or hedge funds.

South Africa’s proposed sovereign wealth fund will aim to secure and develop the country’s national endowment. 

In recent years, South Africa has made significant progress in retail financial inclusion. Now 90 percent of South African adults have access to at least one form of financial service, media reports said. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa in his speech said that, “The National Treasury and the SA Reserve Bank are working together to ease pressure on business and consumers. We have decided to establish a sovereign wealth fund as a means to preserve and grow the national endowment of our nation, giving practical meaning to the injunction that the people shall share in the country’s wealth. We are also proceeding with the establishment of a state bank as part of our effort to extend access to financial services to all South Africans.” 

However, no timeline has been announced for the establishment of the sovereign wealth fund. Finance Minister Tito Mboweni is expected to share details on the plan in his budget speech on February 26. 

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“Issues to do with corruption, issues of how we can straighten out our state-owned enterprises and how we deal with state capture, are issues that are on our radar,” the new President said.

Ramaphosa leads the African National Congress party and is the only candidate to be nominated during a South African Parliament session. “I truly feel humbled to have been given this great privilege of being able to serve our people.”

His pledge to fight corruption is admirable: “I will try to work very hard not to disappoint the people of South Africa,” and intends to run his presidency with ‘humility, faithfulness and dignity.’

Jacob’s leadership has brought painfully difficult situations for the people. Mmusi Maimane, Democratic Alliance leader emphasizes “Zuma built a deep system of corruption that has penetrated every part of the government and the criminal prosecution system.”

However, Zuma has denied delinquency during his leadership and has expressed his views with composure: “No life should be lost in my name and also the ANC should never be divided in my name. I have therefore come to the decision to resign as President of the republic with immediate effect,” he said.

“Even though I disagree with the decision of the leadership of my organization, I have always been a disciplined member of the ANC.”

The post Cyril Ramaphosa elected as South Africa’s new President appeared first on International Finance.

In December, Cyril Ramaphosa replaced Mr Zuma as an ANC leader.

On Sunday senior members of his ANC party discussed the issue. The six most senior figures of the governing ANC party went to President Zuma’s residence in Pretoria on Sunday. But details were not disclosed.

Today, party leaders will hold an emergency meeting to further discuss the concern.

The process of formally removing him from the position will be initiated through a formal recall or by introducing a motion in parliament. All that is known about Mr Zuma’s reaction to the whole situation is from a Twitter post of Julius Malema, an opposition leader and former member of ANC. Mr Malema’s Twitter post said:

“He refused to resign and he told them to take a decision to remove him if they so wish to do so because he didn’t do anything wrong to the country. He’s arguing that he complied with all legal instructions including paying back the money, what more do they want from him.”

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