All eyes will be on SA Revenue Services (Sars) commissioner Edward Kieswetter this week when around 1800 delegates converge at Sandton Convention Centre for 2019’s Tax Indaba.
Tasked with cleaning up the collector, corrupted by former president Jacob Zuma’s Gupta enablers, Kieswetter has four executive scalps to his credit since taking up the hot seat on May 1 - and will have expectedly delivered a strong and no-holds-barred keynote address today.
According to the opening itinerary, pride-of-place next to him on the lectern was set aside for deputy finance minister, David Masondo.
Therefore it was with a sense of weighted anticipation that proceedings started this morning to see how Masondo and Kieswetter may – or may not – sing from the same hymn sheet.
In the meantime Sars, under Kieswetter’s tenure, is also expected to release 1st-tier data this week.
In addition, Statistics SA will be releasing Producer Price Index (PPI) data later this week and, according to initial projections, PPI inflation looks sets to rise from 5.8% to 6%.
And although it’s not good news for final Q2 manufactured goods figures, South Africa’s trade balance looks set to have recorded its third consecutive surplus for the month of July. In short it means exports are topping imports.
