Although I have been vaguely aware of the issue and have included "Euro" links in "More Y2k links" in the course of cruising for Y2k information, I was under the impression that this was a "European" problem and nothing to do with South Africa.
Many things are not clear to me.
Some say the deadline is 1999-01-01. Some say 2002-01-01. I have no idea which is correct. Maybe we should find out.
There is a vast amount of literature on the subject, half of which I do not even understand, and you have dig like mad through piles of stuff to get at the gist.
This thing has obviously been designed by a Committee.
I have only recently started to lurk on EURO2002 list and most of what is said there goes right over my head.
And it is all geared to "internal" Euro countries.
Very little, if anything, seems to have been written about how those "outside" the European Union will be affected. Specifically the Commonwealth countries and the USA.
Primarily, with Europe as one of major trading partners we cannot afford to totally ignore this, and discover at the tail end that we are unprepared and are unable to do business as a result.
Foreign exchange from exports is our life blood. The Rand is worthless enough as it is without taking additional strain.
How do we do invoicing?
How do we arrange forward cover?
How do we handle the interim period?
What do we do with our existing Sterling, Deutschmark, Franc holdings?
Do we dump them and go for dollars?
Convert to gold?
Take pot luck on DDAY?
I suggest that our economists stop worrying about the disasters occurring on the soccer fields and start worrying about how we will cope with Foreign Exchange by the end of the year.
South Africa is in the position of watching from the sidelines. Nobody is doing anything, because nobody knows if we should be doing something.
Just to test the water with my toe, I gave a Y2k talk to some 30 upmarket IT corporate types last week and sneaked in a slide containing two things, the Euro currency symbol and 1999-01-01.
And asked them to tell me the implications thereof.
One (out of Thirty-odd) got it that we were talking about Euro. No suggestions regarding potential exposure were forthcoming. And these are the Movers and Shakers.
I then mentioned some of my thoughts on the topic such as "wouldn't it be nice to be able to print an invoice with a Euro sign on it". Needless to say this went down like a ton of bricks. No interest whatsoever.
Microsoft now has fonts available for download which contain the Euro currency symbol, so this is a start.
This is going to be another uphill battle.
Running Joint Y2k/Euro projects.