Some of the JSE’s top movers to keep an eye on

CAPE TOWN – “It is certain that as a result of Covid-19 we will enter a level of recession that we have not seen before in modern times,” said Laser Group chief executive, Iain Johnson, in a letter to staff last week.

It was a letter to express his regret that there was no way to continue operating the 35-year old Pietermaritzburg-based national courier business, Time Freight, which had been operating as a division of DPD Laser Express Logistics since 2007.

Time Freight will be one of thousands of other businesses, formal and informal, that will close this month or in the next few months.

Next week’s partial lifting of the lockdown will see many companies get back into business, but the real question is about demand. No business can survive by paying salaries, rent and suppliers, with no sales.

Joblessness, lower incomes, badly shaken confidence in the future, rising debts, fears about the virus, about job security – these are the worries of most South African consumers at present, and they are not going to disappear on Friday or any time soon.