BUSINESS MAVERICK: One month before 2019 election, SA economy takes three hits in quick succession By Tim Cohen tim_cohen
For reasons that are somewhat hazy, but certainly important, the new administration and the new president are not inspiring the economy to rev up. This week, three indicators of very different types underlined that significant development.
It’s worth pointing out too that the IMF numbers are very influential, and can change expectations. And, being predictions, they can be very wrong; in 2018 the IMF was predicting SA would grow by 1.5%. Eventually, growth came in at 0.8%. That would be almost 100% wrong. The third hit came from BankservAfrica’s monthly Economic Transaction Index data for March. This measure has the great advantage of being very specific and very fast, measuring essentially all bank transactions.In March, banked economic transactions declined by 0.4% from February. On an annualised basis, the BETI dropped by 1.8% and declined by 0.6% on a quarterly basis,” the organisation said.
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