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Cape Town - In a first for South African aviation low cost carrier Mango and retail giant Edcon have teamed up to allow Edcon's 4.2 million clients to buy Mango tickets with their store cards.

With immediate effect customers holding any one of Edcon's brand cards - Edgars, Jet, Jet Mart, Legit, CNA, Boardmans, Prato, Red Square, Temptations and Jet Shoes - will be able to purchase air travel from Mango's call centre (08611 MANGO) or from Guest Services counters at airports.

Mango said in a statement released late on Tuesday that Edcon account payments through http://www.flymango.com/ will go live during the next 10 days.

"The initiative marks Mango's commitment to making low cost air travel more accessible to all South Africans, further delivering on its commitment not only to offer sustainable lower airfares, but to provide South Africans with innovative distribution channels and payment options," the statement said.

Mango CEO Nico Bezuidenhout said the move is within the carrier's mandate to make air travel more accessible to all South Africans.

"The Edcon partnership will see several million South Africans welcomed on board Mango, empowered to purchase air travel without the need for a traditionally branded credit card."

Edcon's Ian Wood said the retail giant has a philosophy of bringing value-for-money offerings to their customers as well as convenience. Access to Mango flights is the latest in a long line of services that have increased the functionality of Edcon store cards, he said.

In addition to the Mango offering, Edcon customers also have access to 11 insurance products, home loans, personal loans and vehicle finance options. Card holders can also use their cards at more than 1 000 optometrists.

"We (therefore) see Mango as a good fit as it adds convenience to the lives of Edcon customers," said Wood.

Bezuidenhout said the Edcon partnership is the first of several distribution channel extensions the airline is planning.
Article from http://www.fin24.co.za/
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Labels: South Africa - Airlines

Johannesburg - The South African Revenue Service (SARS) on Wednesday announced significant changes to how South African taxpayers submit their income tax returns.

The new, simplified submission process and the redesigned Income Tax return will make it considerably easier for individual and business taxpayers to complete and file their returns, SARS said in a statement.

At the same time it is intended to ensure greater efficiency and faster turn-around times to SARS' internal processes in capturing, verifying and assessing the information submitted by taxpayers.

SARS said it remains conscious of the fact that these changes will require behavioural changes among registered taxpayers who have become accustomed to a filing process with a single annual deadline for submissions in July.

SARS said the changes represent the beginning of an exciting new journey in the interaction between SARS and some 7 million registered taxpayers - 5 million individuals, 1.7 million companies and 300 000 trusts.

The new submission process introduces the increased use of new information technology solutions that will ensure a far less burdensome filing experience to taxpayers. In this regard, for example, taxpayers this year will not be required to include ANY supporting documents - IRP5, IT3 forms from financial services providers, receipts of medical expenses, logbooks or petrol slips - to their income tax returns.

Taxpayers, however, need to ensure that they keep such supporting documents for a period of five years should the need arise for SARS to request them.

The changes include:

New design of income returns: a simpler form; reduced pages; no supporting documents; no calculations

Address verification: returns will be posted. If a taxpayer has not received a return by end of August, contact the SARS call centre - 0860 12 12 18

Access to returns: Simpler registration for eFiling: www.sarsefing.co.za. Returns will be posted, available on DVD to employers or available at branch offices

Preparation for filing: Period May 9 to July 15 2007 - Time to collect information required to fill in return

Filing and submission: Individuals will receive returns by middle of July - Deadline for submissions for individuals: October 31 2007. Companies will receive returns in September 2007 - Deadline for submissions for companies: 6 to 12 months after their financial year

eFiling: benefits include faster turn-around times, delayed payments, automated objections; eFiling expanded to all income tax returns

Keep track of your return: Taxpayers can obtain information on progress of return; call centre and branch offices to assist taxpayers.

Risk detection and profiling: news statistical methods to identify risk; automated risk profiling and validation; enhanced ability to identify errant taxpayers.

Turnaround time on assessments: quicker assessments and refunds; electronic submission (eFiling) will give quicker, more accurate assessment.

Objections: can be lodged electronically via eFiling; will speed up process

Payments and refunds: paid electronically to taxpayer's bank account; no cheques will be issued, unless motivated.
SARS said the changes is the start of a 3 year process of innovation that will introduce a number of improvements as the administration will endeavour to provide continuously improving services to South African taxpayers.

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Labels: South Africa - General

Cape Town - The feeder services supplied to SAA by Airlink and SA Express were an essential part of their network, but it was not necessary to their successful commercial relationship for the national carrier to own either of them, Rodger Foster, the chief executive of privately owned Airlink, said yesterday.

Foster, one of the principal shareholders in Airlink, said that the possibility of a merger between SA Express and Airlink had been investigated in 2001 and 2002 but abandoned.

He added that "it might make sense now", but there had been no dialogue or negotiations since then.

He was responding to a suggestion by Alec Erwin, the minister of public enterprises, that SA Express, which would remain in state ownership but a separate entity from SAA, might be amalgamated with Airlink at some time in the future.

Foster dismissed a suggestion that SAA's low-cost airline, Mango, could replace the full-service airline in the domestic market if the national carrier's turnaround strategy failed.

"Low-cost carriers provide a point-to-point service, but do not act as part of a network providing a domestic, regional and international service with interline agreements to carry passengers for foreign airlines," he said.

"Mango is in a different market from SAA. It is a spin-off division designed to generate profits for the national carrier and provide cheaper services for the general public."

However, industry sources were surprised by the fact that SAA appeared to be competing with itself by offering special fares on its website that, in some cases, were lower than Mango's in order to fill vacant seats on some flights.

They called attention to the fact that both Australian airline Qantas and Thai Airways have started low-cost divisions, but their special offers never compete with their low-cost subsidiaries.

They pointed out that SAA, like some other state-owned airlines that had either been closed or restructured and privatised, had an enormous infrastructure that made it impossible to operate profitably and hence the airline needed radical restructuring.

Article from http://www.busrep.co.za
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Labels: South Africa - Airlines

Knowledge Integration Dynamics (KID) has opened a Cape Town office in response to the burgeoning enterprise data integration and business intelligence market in the region.

Two industry stalwarts will initially service its existing Western Cape clients, and KID will employ more as the market expands.

"Terry Heaney is our Cape data quality specialist and John Ross our sales executive," says Julian Field, business development director at KID. "We already have well known clients such as Foschini, Vodacom and Finsource in the area, but we expect the most prominent growth to come from the banking, financial services and retail markets."

Other potential markets include oil, shipping, publishing and agriculture. "We are looking to expand our Cape operation with business and technical consulting skills both around our product set as well as the data integration market," says Field. "We hope to be as successful in the Cape as we have been in Gauteng."

KID has grown rapidly in recent years, to the extent that it is now among the largest companies in the local business intelligence market.

Ross has a wealth of experience in business intelligence, having specialised in the field for close on a decade. He will take the entire KID suite of data integration, data management, data quality and business intelligence offerings to the Cape Town market, including Informatica, Microstrategy, +EDM, Intimate Data, Oracle and Microsoft, along with associated training and services.

"The Western Cape is a key market in South Africa," says Ross. "KID will be well positioned to leverage the work I have done here over the last five years, notably among the Cape's large corporate clients.

"We expect in particular to do well with Informatica's data integration and quality products with which KID has already taken the lion's share of the market in the rest of the country."
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Labels: South Africa - General

Cape Town public transport

On the cards are:

# The number of trains being increased from 80 to 108.

# Bus subsidies being raised from R350-million to R500m.

# The free-for-all minibus taxi industry being integrated into the public transport system where the state "takes ownership" of taxi routes.

Cape Town is also poised to form a Metropolitan Transport Authority to iron out the fragmentation of the transport system, caused by national, provincial and local government authorities controlling different segments of the system.

The city will also get an integrated ticket system where commuters buy one ticket to ride on a bus, a taxi or a train.

These were some of the moves revealed by Transport and Public Works MEC Marius Fransman at the Cape Town Press Club on Monday.

He was speaking on changes to the city's transportation network in preparation for hosting the 2010 Fifa World Cup semi-final.

Fransman said the provincial government had decided that public transport would be the "critical path-breaker" to economic growth in the province.

It had also decided to move away from a "populist" approach to planning and development in the Western Cape.

"The drive for 2010 is to create a long-lasting legacy for public transport. What this will require over the next few years is more certainty, more predictability and less populism," Fransman said.

This would also apply to the "not so sexy areas" of underground infrastructure, he said.

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Labels: South Africa - Transport