financial management

This past year has been a tough one for all in South Africa but we have survived albeit battered and bruised. The 2010 Soccer World Cup is only a few months away and there are signs that the economy is picking up and a positive spirit is responding to this stimulus.

CSI will stay flat

With South Africa being the only African country with a seat on the Group of 20 (G20), while serving as co-chair of the working group on reforming the International Monetary Fund, it has "a moral obligation towards the continent to call for more responsible management of the global financial system".

The Central Statistical Office reported yesterday that Zimbabwe's inflation quickened to 0.6% month on month in June from -1.0% in May.

Zimbabwe’s new unity government, formed by rivals President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in February, has adopted the use of multiple currencies to stop hyperinflation, which rendered the country’s currency worthless.

The CSO, which resumed calculating inflation figures in December, having last released data for July 2008, did not give year-on-year statistics.

NGOs want Zimbabwe’s cash-strapped power-sharing government to return money seized by controversial central bank governor Gideon Gono and allegedly used to prop up President Robert Mugabe’s old government.

The National Association of NGOs (NANGO) says it has written to Finance Minister Tendai Biti demanding that he outline a repayment plan when he announces a mid-term national budget statement to Parliament this week.

My name is Robin Opperman, and I am the Director of the Umcebo Trust. We run a non-profit art and craft trust, based in Durban. We applied in the most recent Lotto round of applications, and submitted end of February. We received the standard acknowledgements and within the past two weeks were very excited to receive correspondence from Lotto asking for elaboration on a number of issues related to our application.

Much is being discussed and written about regarding the global recession. We will only be able to see the full effect of this on funding when we look back in a year or two and can calculate the actual impact. Anecdotally though, there are many stories of reduced funding from foreign donors hardest hit by the crisis, and corporate donors whose profits are down and whose giving is often based on a percentage of net profits after tax.

Is the international credit crunch affecting the funding of South African NGOs? If it is, this is only the latest in a series of developments - beginning with the diversion of funding away from NGOs after 1994 - that has led to NGOs focusing on business development and sustainability, in an attempt to lessen their reliance on donor funding.

Of course, the NGOs that wish to generate revenue, do not intend to distribute any profits made, but to plough them back into the achieving of their objectives.

Zimbabwe's central bank took hundreds of millions of euros from private bank accounts, including €300 000 from a bank account belonging to Hivos, a Dutch development organisation.

Director of Hivos’ regional office in Harare, Corina Straatsma, points out that €90 000 is still missing although the rest has been paid back.