No winners with SA’s junk status

Let us ponder what the downgrading of our economy to junk status and the blood nose the rand has been given by the world’s leading currencies means for South Africans across the social spectrum.

A medium-size flour mill in the grain producing area of the Free State – on which a disproportionate number of jobs rely – urgently requires a major upgrade of existing machinery.

This needs financing and the import of specialised equipment from abroad. The banks will have to pass on higher interest rates to service the loan. The urgently needed machinery will cost a good deal more than it would have before the downgrade, but if this maintenance in not instituted, jobs will be lost.

The price of the mill’s finished product will invariably rise. In Soweto, one member of an extended family lucky enough to hold a job is faced with about R30 daily to make the trip to work in the CBD.

With oil irrevocably linked to the American dollar, fuel costs will shoot up and the costs of the daily taxi rides will climb and cut a swath through an already meagre budget.

Simply put, there are no winners here.

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