News 12:00

BULLETIN 4 Februarie 12 pm

Good afternoon. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# BOSA urges president Cyril Ramaphosa not to make promises he can’t keep in his state of the nation address
# Cricket: A place in the final of the SA20 is at stake in Gqeberha today
# And Facebook is celebrating its 21st birthday today with nearly three-billion users

# With president Cyril Ramaphosa set to deliver the state of the nation address on Thursday, Build One South Africa says citizens deserve more than recycled rhetoric. The party has accused the president of making promises in his SONA speeches which he has failed to fulfil. BOSA’s Roger Solomons says they have identified ten of the most glaring broken promises that expose Ramaphosa’s failure to deliver over the past years. He says these include Eskom’s unbundling, reducing unemployment, and digital migration:

# The Bureau for Economic Research says South Africa’s manufacturing sector is struggling, with the Absa Purchasing Managers’ Index dropping to 45.3 last month. This marks its third consecutive month of decline. The bureau warns that weak demand, rising costs, and job losses may hinder economic growth in early 2025. While new sales orders and business activity showed slight improvement, employment remains in decline. Analysts remain cautiously optimistic, forecasting GDP growth of 1.5-percent for 2025, up from 0.7-percent last year.

# The Western Cape has seen an exponential growth in its tourism sector. Cape Town International Airport has recorded a ten-percent increase in arrivals with 226 international flights landing weekly. The cruise sector is also growing, with 88 ships docking this season. Mayoral committee member for Economic Growth and Tourism, James Vos, says efforts to draw tourists to the province are now yielding the desired results:

# Cricket: A place in Saturday’s final of the SA20 is at stake in today’s first qualifier between neighbours MI Cape Town and Paarl Royals in Gqeberha. The winner will have the luxury of waiting for the confirmation of their opponent at the Wanderers, while the loser will still have a chance to rectify the situation. That team will play the winner of tomorrow’s eliminator between Joburg Super Kings and Sunrisers Eastern Cape in Centurion. The winner will earn 34-million-rand and the losing finalist 16.25-million.

# The financial indicators: The dollar trades at 18-rand-74-cents and the euro at 19-rand-35-cents. One British pound costs 23-rand-27-cents and Bitcoin trades at 98-thousand-471-dollars. Gold sells at two-thousand-815-dollars-93-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 74-dollars-87-cents a barrel.

# And finally: One of the world’s most popular social media platforms, Facebook, is celebrating its 21st birthday today. Originally created as a social platform for college students, Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. The platform has nearly three billion users registered on its network, with 350-million photos uploaded daily. India currently has around 260-million users, which is the highest number of active Facebook users globally. Facebook is the third most popular site globally, just behind Google and YouTube.

Stay tuned for more news………….