Staff Reporter – The Zimbabwe Daily
Pretoria, South Africa – South Africa’s consumer inflation rate is now at 2.2 percent its lowest since September 2004.
Although this might be good news, a lot of South Africans are bearing the brunt of COVID-19 which has adversely affected their livelihoods regardless of the low consumer inflation rate.
“Prices of basic goods have relatively increased which has caused some financial pressure on many homes, this is despite the fact that the consumer inflation index is at its lowest in 16 years.
Many families are struggling to put food on their tables as they are now jobless, and jobs are not easy to come by especially during this time of COVID-19.
Right now some of Truworths’ customers are owing the clothing retailer R5.5 billion in clothing accounts and most of them have already signalled that they won’t be able to settle their debts,” said Ray Mahlaka, Managing Editor of Mergers and Acquisitions Africa.
Dr. Nic Spaull, a Senior Research Fellow at the Research on Socioeconomic Policy (RESEP) group said the current socioeconomic status of the country was worrisome.
“To date, at least 3 million people have lost their jobs and that is from February this year and the number is going to increase.
Moreso, of the 3 million people that lost their jobs, two million were women with a lot of them earning less than R3 000, there is a lot of social inequality in this country, some will have to sell their assets for them to buy food,” said Dr. Spaull.
