OUT TO LUNCH
Like many politically realistic South Africans who are in the fortunate position to be able to do so, I have a reasonably healthy offshore US dollar denominated investment. The lefties will obviously label this ‘privilege’ but that’s only because the lefties suffer from serious inferiority complexes together with an unhealthy dose of envy.
As someone who arrived in this country forty-three years ago with the princely sum of R20 000 (partly thanks to the financial rand which was trading at R4.50 to the £ back then) I would argue that my offshore investments are the result of luck, good timing, hard work and some very astute investment decisions; all things that are foreign concepts to your average lefty.
For example, just over ten years ago when Pravin Gordhan was finance minister, he was bemoaning the fact that the Rand was too strong and was affecting our exports. Like a good, patriotic South African I immediately rallied around to help and decided to keep a modest legacy from my late mother in an offshore investment account rather than bring it back to SA and thus add to the strength of the Rand. At the time the Rand was trading at around R10.80 to the £ and is now trading at around R24.4 to the £ so my patriotism has paid off. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The pound sterling investment was converted to a dollar equity investment quite legally through my investment advisers and the only problem is that I face a large capital gains tax payment when I repatriate the investment. But bearing in mind the size of the capital gain that is the least of my worries.
My major worry is should I liquidate the investment and bring the proceeds back into South Africa or should I hang on for a bit longer? As I have pointed out to my bankers, I am not getting any younger and I don’t buy my groceries in the US so maybe I should have the money closer to home. On the other hand, the chances of the Rand weakening against all other major currencies pre and post election is a pretty safe bet in my book so my dollar account would look even better. And if I do liquidate my dollar investments and bring the boodle back to SA I will no longer have a foreign currency denominated account to benefit from any future ANC fiscal folly.