Huge trade balance surplus beats
The December surplus was more than double even the optimistic forecasts — and helped shrink the full-year deficit
SA’s trade balance recorded a R12.04bn surplus in December, double the R6.3bn economists had expected. Nedbank economist Johannes Khosa said a slowdown in import growth had helped to boost the trade surplus. This “could be because firms are closed in December”, he said, adding “there was weak import activity [in that month]”. South African companies imported less equipment and machinery, vehicle products and base metal imports, according to figures released by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) on Tuesday. On the other end, Khosa said rising commodity prices were expected to boost exports because this was SA’s primary economic strength. The country’s trade balance has been in surplus for five of the past eight months. SA exported R93bn worth of goods and imported R80.9bn worth of goods in December, resulting in the trade account improving to –R2.9bn from –R52.2bn in 2015. The contribution from the free trade zone between SA, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland accounted f...
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