Flash Briefing: SA unemployment rate highest on global list; SA cannabis company plans to list on JSE; ex-minister Dlamini

• South Africa’s unemployment rate surged to the highest on a global list of 82 countries monitored by Bloomberg. The jobless rate rose to 34.4% in the second quarter from 32.6% in the three months through March, Statistics South Africa said Tuesday in a report released in the capital, Pretoria. Unemployment according to the expanded definition, which includes people who were available for work but not looking for a job, rose to 44.4% from 43.2% in the first quarter. While the unemployment rate is now the highest of the countries tracked by Bloomberg, the data from some of those nations is outdated. The unemployment data is likely to deteriorate in the third quarter because the government tightened Covid-19 curbs in the face of a third wave of infections, hindering efforts to revive an economy that shrank 7% last year.
• The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Gauteng will prosecute former social development minister Bathabile Dlamini in connection with the social grants payments fiasco in 2017. Dlamini faces a charge of perjury after allegedly giving false evidence in her testimony under oath at an inquiry instituted by the Constitutional Court in 2018. Dlamini could not immediately be reached for comment.
• Cilo Cybin Pharmaceutical is considering an initial public offering (IPO) in the next 12 months after becoming the first SA company to win the right to grow, process and package cannabis products. The firm, named after the psychoactive substance in magic mushrooms, received the required certification from the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority. It will now be able to produce marijuana for sale to consumers around the world, founder and CEO Gabriel Theron said in an interview. “The plan for the next 12 months is to go public,” Theron said at Cilo Cybin’s operations near Pretoria. “We are planning a dual listing with the main board being the JSE, and we are thinking Luxembourg possibly for a secondary listing or another bourse in Europe.”

(Visited 847 times, 847 visits today)