The IMF cut SA’s growth forecast for 2022 slightly, citing “a softer-than-forecast” second half of 2021 and a subdued outlook for business investment.

While the forecast change is hardly a game-changer and leaves the fund’s projections not far from those of the government, which expects GDP to average less than 2% over the next three years after a strong rebound from a slump in 2020 that was the biggest in a century, it’s the latest to point to the cost of the violence and looting that engulfed the country in July 2021...