SA healthcare receives a huge cash injection

Tamar Kahn

Science and Health Editor

CAPE TOWN — Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has allocated extra money for the immediate crisis posed by SA’s HIV/AIDS epidemic while not forgetting the long-term challenge of improving health infrastructure and retaining skilled staff in the public sector, the medium-term budget policy statement shows.

An extra R300m is allocated to the HIV/AIDS conditional grants this year. The money provides for the increased cost of the new AZT-nevirapine regimen for preventing mother to child transmission of HIV, which replaces a regimen based solely on nevirapine.

Extra funds were also needed to accommodate more patients than had been anticipated on the government’s free treatment programme, said the treasury’s director for health policy Mark Bletcher.

More than 500000 HIV patients had started treatment since the programme’s inception in 2004, 200000 of them in the past year, he said. The budget for HIV/AIDS conditional grants has been revised up R932m over the medium term, taking the total to R12,4bn.

The budget increases the provincial equitable share by R1bn in 2008-09 to pay for higher than anticipated implementation of new occupation-specific wage dispensation for nurses. The 10,5% increase in salaries negotiated in the bargaining chamber was significantly higher than the 7,5% increase provinces had budgeted for this year, said Bletcher.

Public service to receive huge wage boost

Wyndham Hartley

Parliamentary Editor

CAPE TOWN — The higher than budgeted public service salary increases will cost the provinces R3bn this year and will add a huge R23,2bn to the salary bill over the next three years, the medium-term budget policy statement revealed yesterday.

Not only were the provinces affected by the higher than anticipated increases, but every government department — particularly those with large staff components such as defence and the South African Police Service (SAPS) — had to have its budget topped up in the additional appropriation to meet these increased personnel costs.

The policy statement said that “at the time of tabling their budgets, provinces were asked to provide for salary adjustments of 7,5% in 2008-09, but actual increases of 10,5% were awarded. An amount of R3bn is included in the 2008-09 adjustments budget and R23,2bn is proposed for the next three years for the carry-through costs of higher salary increases and to provide for additional personnel costs in education and health.”

Defence has been given an extra R202m to cover the higher salary costs this year, while the justice department has been allocated R119m and the SAPS a whopping R668m.

All in all, the current transfers to the provinces will increase this year to R7,6bn, bringing the total allocation to R245,6bn for the current financial year.

This will rise by a further 10,8% each year, bringing the total allocation to provinces in the form of “equitable share” to R333,8bn in 2011-12.

South Africa: International Health Care Company Improves Lives

America.gov (Washington, DC)

20 October 2008
Posted to the web 21 October 2008

Phillip Kurata

The South African division of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the world’s largest health care company, played a leading role on the corporate front to topple the apartheid regime and plays a vigorous part now in efforts to defeat the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

J&J has been nominated for the Secretary of State's Corporate Citizenship Award for 2008 in recognition of its positive effect on the communities where it does business.

Roger Crawford, J&J's executive director for South Africa, said his company's commitment to the welfare of the community is borne out by its actions. He read aloud part of the third tenet of J&J's credo, "We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work.... We must encourage civic improvements."

"In the 1980s, when the anti-apartheid struggle was heating up, we felt that we had to take a stand on the side of social justice," Crawford said. Back then, he was a young J&J executive who believed that enlightened corporations could do more to end apartheid by staying engaged than by leaving the country.

J&J embraced the Sullivan principles for responsible business behavior in South Africa, which included ending segregation of the races in all eating, locker room and work facilities and equal and fair employment practices for all employees. Crawford befriended the author of the principles -- Reverend Leon Sullivan, an American Baptist minister and an outspoken critic of apartheid -- and was assigned to organize the international business community to apply the principles.

Manuel Says South Africa Mining at `Risk' From Crisis

By Nasreen Seria

Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said the country's mining industry is at ``risk'' because of the fallout from the global financial crisis.

``Demand is likely to fall and prices will be low,'' Manuel said in an interview with Johannesburg-based South African Broadcasting Corp. today.

The price of platinum, South Africa's biggest export, has plunged 58 percent in the past six months, dropping as low as $838.10 an ounce in London today. The slump in commodity prices has undermined the rand, which fell below 11 to the dollar for the first time since April 2002 today.

South Africa's mining output declined 6.2 percent and non- gold production fell 3.5 percent in August from a year ago, Pretoria-based Statistics South Africa said on Oct. 9. A drop in mining production may lower corporate profits and tax earnings next year, Manuel said in his mid-term budget yesterday. The government is forecasting a budget deficit of 1.6 percent of gross domestic product in the year beginning April 1, compared with a February forecast of a 0.6 percent surplus.

Resources groups lead in sustainability report

By: Esmarie Swanepoel

Published on 16th October 2008

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) - Four of the five top rankings in Ernst & Young’s excellence in sustainability reporting survey, which was released on Thursday, went to companies in the resources sector.

Platinum producer Anglo Platinum, and synfuel producer Sasol shared this year’s top honours, followed by diversified miner BHP Billiton, gold producer Anglogold Ashanti, and financial service provider Standard Bank.

Ernst & Young associate director Jayne Mammatt said the tendency for resources to outperform other sectors was probably attributable to the fact that sustainability reporting evolved from environmental reporting.

“Resources companies are perceived as having a greater impact on the environment and, hence, focused efforts on this type of reporting long before other sectors. This could be a reflection of maturity, more than a reflection of the willingness to report,” she said.

$1,4bn South African energy coal projects heading for production – BHP Billiton

By: Martin Creamer

Published on 22nd October 2008

Updated 42 minutes ago

The two combined-value $1,425-billion coal projects BHP Billiton was developing in South Africa were both "on schedule and within budget" for initial production in 2009 and 2010, the world’s largest diversified mining company said on Tuesday.

Releasing its quarterly report on exploration and development activities for the quarter ended September 30, BHP Billiton said that the $450-million Klipspruit energy-coal project was more than 50% complete and would begin producing in the second half of next year.

The far bigger $975-million Douglas-Middleburg Optimisation energy-coal project would then follow by mid-2010.

The company, headed by South African CEO Marius Kloppers, said that Klipspruit’s engineering was '’significantly advanced”, with civil works and plant erection “progressing well”.

New State mining company exempt from ‘application’ criteria only – DME

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By: Martin Creamer

Published on 21st October 2008

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) - The State mining company is exempt from the “application” criteria of South Africa’s minerals legislation only, and not from the legislation’s key “granting” criteria, says Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) DDG Jacinto Rocha.

Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica has, in a Government Gazette notice, exempted the State-owned African Exploration Mining & Finance Corporation (AEMFC) – the vehicle for the development of the State mining company – from provisions dealing with applications for prospecting rights, mining rights and mining permits.

These provisions, South Africa’s Chamber of Mines (CoM) says in a media release, require applicants to submit environmental management programmes (EMPs), and to consult with interested and affected parties.

Rocha tells Mining Weekly Online that AEMFC will have to develop an EMP to fulfil the “granting” criteria, and will be required to consult with local communities in the process of developing that EMP.

Rocha adds that AEMFC will also have to comply with mine health and safety legislation, as well as with social and labour plans and black economic-empowerment requirements in the event of a mining right being granted.

AEMFC, he confirms, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the State-owned Central Energy Fund (CEF) and thus an organ of State.