Volkswagen South Africa is set to double the number of cars it exports from its Eastern Cape plant, after the company won an order to export 19 000 new-generation Polo hatchbacks in 2009 and 55 000 of the same cars to international right-hand-drive markets in 2010.

South African telecoms firm Telkom has launched a new, state-of-the-art, "green" data centre – boasting features such as "virtualisation" and free-air cooling – to take advantage of a local data centre operations market that is expected to grow at around 22% a year.

While South Africa's recovery from the global economic downturn is lagging, there are convincing signs that the low point of the cycle has been reached and that positive growth will be recorded for the fourth quarter, the Reserve Bank says.

Massive increases in South African residential property sales have been reported by Seeff Properties.

Inflationary pressure from the country's labour markets has moderated in recent months, the South African Reserve Bank says in its November Monetary Policy Review.