You’re the man!

In South Africa criminals have taken to blowing up ATM’s in order to make off with the cash in them. This Financial Mail article discusses the trend:

In the first five months of this year, 148 ATM blasts were carried out across SA – an average of one a day, and nearly three times the number in all of 2006.

Security analysts are growing increasingly concerned at the ease with which the bombers are able to obtain the mining explosives used in most bombings.

The Economist has another article on the South African economy. Although they say things are going well right now, not everything is looking up in the long run.

• Growth has outpaced infrastructural development:

The country’s infrastructure is creaking—roads are overcrowded, cement and refined fuels are having to be imported, and power outages are a growing problem

• They are also concerned about the current-account deficit:

At present the deficit is being funded comparatively easily, but an emerging-markets sell-off—which many analysts believe to be inevitable over the next year—would hit South Africa hard, putting first the rand and then domestic interest rates under pressure.

• The skills deficit is also mentioned as a serious (and worsening) problem. This is especially true in the public sector at all levels.

According to the country’s largest bank, ABSA, managers are battling to cope with “severe shortages of skilled labour and production capacity constraints”

Several factors are mentioned as contributing to the skills shortage but emigration is specifically talked about.

The South African Institute of Race Relations estimates that some 850,000 whites have left the country since 1995, reducing the white population (which, for historical reasons, is still the most skilled segment) to around 4.3m people from more than 5m a decade ago. ABSA believes that “the vast majority” of those who have left the country—or are contemplating doing so—are skilled people between the ages of 20 and 40. This white exodus is being compounded, according to the bank, by the increasing emigration of mixed-race, Asian and black professionals, especially from the public sector, which is losing medical, technical and engineering skills very rapidly.

There is an interesting article on the South African road network in the Financial Mail of June 1. Here are some highlights:

• It is estimated that 40% of the critical road network will reach the end of it’s structural life in the next 5 years
• The amounts budgeted for roads are increasing hugely (R2.1bn in 2005/6 to R11.5bn in 2009/10)
• More and more of this money is going to toll roads – more and more national roads will be toll roads
• Because all of the expenditure is coming at once instead of steadily over time, there are severe shortages
  • This is expected to lead to a cost escalation of about 30-50%
• Regulatory approval is also proving an issue with some roads waiting up to 4 years for approval

All of this paints quite a scary picture. Then there is the fact that Spoornet is also not keeping pace (for instance road now carries 82% of freight between Johannesburg and Durban instead of the other way around).

Thank heavens the guys are putting money and effort into it now (there really are road works everywhere), I just wish they hadn’t left it so late. And while they are at it, put money into the power grid too…

That said, I know that we are not alone. Whenever I go to New York I am shocked by the state of some of their roads.