EditorPrime Business Africa can confirm that South Africa has just increased minimum hourly wage by as much as 6.95% to 23.19 rand ($1.50).
The new minimum wage takes effect on March 1, 2022. South Africa’s Labour Minister, Thulas Nxesi, made the announcement on Tuesday in anticipation of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Thursday February 10, 2022 state-of-the-nation address.
Ramaphosa will on Thursday clarify the proposal to introduce basic income grant or additional income support for citizens.
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The increase, according to Bloomberg analysis surpasses the central bank’s inflation forecast of 4.9% in 2022.
Recall that Ramaphosa’s South Africa had, in January 2019, officially introduced a national minimum wage. The government said the move was to protect workers from “unreasonably low wages.”
South Africa and Nigeria are in the ‘league’ of the world’s most unequal societies. South African government had said the 2019 move was to reduce the income gap, the same reason for the current intervention.
More than 35% of South Africans in the labor market are unemployed and analysts would think that the move is not likely to have significant impact on the living standards of a large chunk of the population.
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