African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) on Monday, announced a decision to terminate its relationship with embattled auditing firm KPMG, citing governance and ethics compliance following “careful consideration”.
“ARM has noted with concern the questions raised about KPMG’s governance and ethics compliance as well as allegations regarding the lawfulness of KPMG’s conduct,” ARM said in a statement.
“The ethics, governance and quality of the South African auditing firms have been globally respected for many years. It is extremely important that the behaviour and conduct of our auditing firms continues to justify the respect, trust and confidence that they have earned.”
ARM is a South African diversified mining and minerals company that mines and beneficiates iron ore, manganese ore, chrome ore, platinum group metals (PGMs), copper, nickel and coal.
ARM also produces manganese and chrome alloys, and has an investment in gold through its shareholding in Harmony. It is owned by South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe.
KPMG has been losing clients weekly since it withdrew its controversial report on a “rogue spy unit” within the South African Revenue Service (SARS), and also being implicated in covering money laundering in Gupta-owned businesses. (Via African News Agency)
SA Chamber of Commerce Calls On Gigaba To Restore Business Confidence
The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI) on Monday urged finance minister Malusi Gigaba to issue a Policy statement that will restore confidence to the business environment and the market in general.
Gigaba will deliver his inaugural Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) on Wednesday, setting out the fiscal policy objectives and government spending priorities over the three-year expenditure cycle.
Gigaba has an unenviable task of closing government debt, consolidating fiscal policy, ensuring adherence of austerity measures while bankrolling critical government programmes like higher education, social welfare, and broke state-owned enterprises (SOEs), all amid bleak economic growth forecasts.
SACCI said it was important that Gigaba deals decisively and clearly with the government’s plans in the area of fiscal discipline, given the constraints caused by the imbalance in the declining revenue base vis a vi the expenditure in the areas of social development and capital investment.
The Chamber also said Gigaba must deal with government’s plans on the funding gap and managing the deficit, rating agencies downgrades, progress on capital investment programmes in infrastructure, bail-outs required for some state-owned enterprises, and progress with implementing the National Development plan. (Via African News Agency)
