Manufacturing and mining production end 2016 on a decline
SA’s manufacturing sector, which accounts for an eighth of the economy, was not expected to do well last year, but still performed worse than expected
Output from SA’s manufacturing sector, which accounts for about an eighth of SA’s economy, ended the year with a decline. Stats SA’s manufacturing output index, which was set to 100 in 2010, came in at 98.5 points in December, a 2% decline from the same month in 2015. This was worse than economists’ expectations, which had not been rosy anyway: Trading Economics had forecast an increase of 0.1% while the Bloomberg consensus was for no change. Total manufacturing output for 2016, however, was 0.8% higher than in 2015. South African factories sold R160bn worth of goods in December, according to Stats SA. Without taking inflation into account, this was a 5% increase on the R153bn sold in December 2015.
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