BUSINESS DAY TV: Economy in for tough times
Stanlib economist Kevin Lings discusses the possibility of South Africa entering a technical recession following weak manufacturing and retail sales data for February
KevinLings is an economist at Stanlib. BUSINESS DAY TV: Mining production numbers for February out today have rounded up a week of rather mixed economic data for South Africa. Of course we had some commentators saying we could be headed for a recession. Absolutely and to get his view, joining us in the studio now, Kevin Lings, chief economist at Stanlib. Kevin, so we had the Business Day running with the headlines ‘the hope of South Africa escaping recession rests on mining’, to what extent does the sector really have the ability to pull this economy in the other direction where of course it only accounts for 6% of GDP but where gains here do translate into other sectors like the manufacturing space? KEVIN LINGS: Sure, on its own it’s fairly small so it can’t really lift South Africa’s growth rate meaningfully. It’s been less than 10% of this economy actually for a couple of decades and if anything over time it’s structurally getting smaller. We are getting a little bit of an uplift...
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