More than 900 businesses out of 1000 that participated in a government survey about last month’s havoc in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng have confirmed that they were impacted by the looting of stores, shopping malls, and storage facilities.
Moreover, these businesses reported that more than 10 000 jobs were at risk because of unrest-related losses, the Bureau of Economic Research says in its Weekly Review.
Just in Gauteng, the so-called economic heartland of the country, more than 14 000 jobs have been affected by the unrest, the provincial legislature has found.
“To make matters worse, the economy suffered an additional setback last week when an IT security breach at Transnet severely disrupted operations at SA’s major ports,” the Bureau adds.
“Though some operations have since commenced, the temporary disruption to exports and imports came on top of the closure of the Durban harbour amid the earlier violent looting in KZN.”
This has led various industry bodies to raise concerns about losses that are likely to result from delays in moving goods through the country’s ports, the Bureau states.
