Tag Archives: interest rate

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 23 July

imageTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines 

*   The South African Reserve Bank announced today that it will increase the interest rate by 0,25 %!

*   The Table Mountain Aerial Cableway will close for its annual maintenance on Monday 27 July until 9 August. Maintenance work will be undertaken, and the cable car cabins will be upgraded too. The maintenance work is overseen by Swiss engineers, to meet the global cableway safety standards of the Swiss Governing Body for Cableways.

*   Uber is looking at introducing UberPool, allowing the sharing of Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine News headlines: 29 January

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   The Reserve Bank has left the interest rate unchanged, the repo rate remaining at 5,75 %.

*   The retail trade experienced a ‘fair to middling‘ Festive Season trade, and the projection is that 2015 will be much the same.  Stores targeting the lower income group were impacted by low demand, caused by unemployment and debt.  Woolworths sales growth was lower in the past six months than in the same period a year prior.

*   The International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association has become an ‘association partner‘ for World Travel Market Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 16 January

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Google has announced that it will launch driverless automatic cars in five years from now.  The company is working with American authorities to test the safety of these cars.

*   The SA economy could grow by 2,1% this year, a better growth rate than that of 2014, with lower oil prices, higher consumer spend, fewer strikes, lower inflation rate, and a small interest rate hike later this year.  Barclays Africa economist Peter Worthington says that the growth rate could be even higher, were it not for Eskom’s loadshedding!

*   Food prices could fall this year due to the decreasing oil and therefore fuel price, reducing inflation, but not by much, it is Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 29 January

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   The first ever African marketing office of SA Tourism was opened yesterday in Lagos in Nigeria, by our Minister of Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk.  Not only will this be good for tourism for our country, but it also aims to create greater awareness and to attract more tourists to Africa globally.

*   The Reserve Bank has increased the interest rate by 50 basis points, the first increase in five years, to curb inflation caused by the weak Rand.

*   SAA made a loss of R991 million in the 2012/2013 financial year, an improvement on its previous loss of R1,25 billion in the previous financial year.  It blames the loss on the ‘weakened rand‘, as 60% of its costs are dollar based.  It announced today that had the Rand not weakened, SAA would have made a profit!  Cost-cutting efforts have been cutting the Kigali (to Rwanda) and Buenos Aires routes.  All long-distance routes are loss-making, admitted CEO Monwabisi Kalawe, but have to be retained for strategic reasons, such as Beijing.

*   The USA has close to 8000 wineries, of which just less than half are in California, by far the  dominant wine production state.   South Africa has about one tenth of this number!

*   The 9000 participants in the Travel Weekly’s Readers’ Choice Awards voted South Africa as the best Continue reading →