As 2020 rushes towards us, it’s time for that activity fraught (or should that be “vrot”?) with difficulty – Christmas presents or, at least, a wish list of what I’d like to find under the tree.
I guess I share the sentiment of most in our wonderful country – that the euphoria of the Springboks winning the World Cup spills over into the general economy and all other areas to give us a much-needed economic boost, a drop in the unemployment rate, and a run on orange jump suits as those responsible for our economic mess, through corruption, be sent away for a long time after surrendering all their ill-gotten gains.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
On a more likely note, though, even a modest uptick in business confidence brought about by some successful prosecutions – walking the talk, rather than just talking it – thereby avoiding the Moody’s downgrade which otherwise seems almost inevitable, would be great.
And, on the subject of miracles, may Andre de Ruyter somehow save Eskom from collapse – we really do want to keep the lights on! – and that unions see the sense of losing some jobs in the bloated public sector and SOEs in order to save the vast majority of them.
On a wider front, it would be nice to see the Brexit issue finally settled to bring some stability to major markets (and that wonderful meme of it being 2192 and the annual trip to Brussels by the UK PM to ask for an extension is put to rest!), and some sort of sense returning to US politics (is that even possible?).
From an industry perspective, I see lots of opportunity in cloud, security, networking and storage as our world continues to be ever more connected and immediate, so some level of good news is there already, but I think POPI will, after much delay, need to have some serious attention paid to it by local companies as it seems many people have forgotten about it.
So, despite the tough economy, there’s still plenty of opportunity and well-run businesses will continue to grow and prosper. It’s a question of boards working with executive management to ensure risks are identified and planned for, strategy is updated on an ongoing basis, and the business runs in a lean, efficient way with great customer service being a cornerstone.
Wishing you all a restful holiday season and a wonderful 2020!