Data releases to provide economic health check
Whether SA is on the road to recovery or recession will be revealed by January’s mining and manufacturing data on Tuesday
Two clues as to whether SA is heading for another quarter of economic decline or a rebound will be provided by Statistics SA on Tuesday. At 11:30am, Stats SA will release January’s mining production and sales figures. In the fourth quarter of 2016 GDP data that Stats SA published on March 7, mining was the largest contributor to SA’s overall economy declining by 0.3% in the three months to end-December from the previous quarter. Two consecutive quarters of GDP decline is the general definition of a recession. Mining output fell 11.5% in the fourth quarter, contributing 0.9 of a percentage point to the overall 0.3% decline in GDP. This was followed by manufacturing, which decreased by 3.1% and contributed 0.4 of a percentage point to the decline. Stats SA is scheduled to report January’s manufacturing production and sales data at 1pm. A monthly poll of factory managers sponsored by Absa, which tends to be a good predictor of Stats SA’s manufacturing data, showed a 4.2 percentage poin...
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