At the beginning of the year there will be much more discussion of the inflation rate with various Unions, etc, all demanding big increases for their members.  Those increases will always be referenced against the inflation rate and we are quite fortunate that in recent years our inflation rate has been fairly steady and typically on the way down.  Inflation reached an all time high of 20,9% in January 1986 in South Africa and it has been as low as 0.2% in January 2004.  The long-term average is 9,49% and the actual inflation rate for November, which was issued in December, was 5,3%.  Economists who generally don’t forecast that well, tend to get this figure pretty accurate, because it is quite hard to be that far out and they are predicting that in February, around when most people get their annual increases, inflation is likely to be 5,5%.  Once again of course that will depend on factors such as the Rand/Dollar exchange rate and the impact upon the petrol price which generally has quite an impact on overall inflation.