Though SA is a small fish in a big pond, the question we pose this week is whether there is any merit in global funds and investors considering SA’s property market as part of their diversification objectives.

HAVING predicted that SA's hospitality and leisure market was poised to benefit from greatly increased investor confidence, particularly from foreign investors, Golding Hotel Investment Consultants concluded deals up 76% at more than R220m for the financial year to February.

Cape Town - Shrugging off the effects of a stronger rand, diversified mass market retailer and wholesaler Massmart had pencilled in record sales and profit for the full year to June, it said in a trading statement this week.

Cape Town - More increases in short-term insurance rates might be necessary in 2003 because reinsurance and other inflation-related costs continued to escalate, Ken Saggers, the chairman of Mutual & Federal Insurance Company, said this week.

Pretoria - Interest rates including mortgage rates were expected to be lowered by 3 percentage points during the second half of this year, Jacques du Toit, a senior economist at banking group Absa, said yesterday.

The rand stumbled yesterday, pressed by importer demand, and analysts said its failure to capitalise on the dollar's weakness raised questions about its ability to sustain current levels.

The SA Chamber of Business (Sacob) called on the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates "sooner rather than later" at yesterday's release of its business confidence index for April.

it is still not clear what the moratorium on release of statistics has achieved.

TELKOM will demonstrate its new T-Mall online shop-front service at the Faire, which will allow small businesses to promote and sell their goods and services on the internet with minimum complexity and risk.

Local products aim at global market.